In 1831, French historian Alexis de Tocqueville visited the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, where prison officials were pioneering a novel rehabilitation, based on Quaker principles of reflection and penitence. They called it solitary confinement, and it’s where we get the name penitentiary.
Now, 180 years later, “at least 25,000 prisoners” — and possibly many more, various sources say — are in solitary confinement in the United States, with little consistency in the amount of time they will spend there. The United Nations reported that more prisoners are held in solitary confinement in the United States than any other democratic nation, according a recent article in the New York Times.
“By 2005, 44 states had supermax prisons or their equivalents. In most, prisoners get out of their cells for only a few hours a week. They are fed through slots in their cell doors and are denied access to work programs or other rehabilitation efforts. If visitors are allowed, the interactions are conducted with no physical contact,” the Times concluded.
Some prisoners seem to adjust to isolation, according to a report by Craig W. Haney, a psychology professor the University of California.
But Haney added that “the rigid control, absence of normal human interaction and lack of stimulation imposed by prolonged isolation can cause a wide range of psychological symptoms, including insomnia, withdrawal, rage and aggression, depression, hallucinations and thoughts of suicide…Worse still is the fact that for many of these men, the real damage only becomes apparent when they get out of this environment.”
A New York Times story on Pelican Bay, a supermax prison in California, reported most prisoners claim they suffer from nervousness, anxiety, lethargy or other psychological complaints. Seventy percent said they felt themselves to be at risk of “impending nervous breakdown.”
Because of what has been learned about the adverse psychological affects of isolation, humanitarian groups have argued that, its use should have been ended long ago. However, because of their extensive staffing requirements, the economic factor has brought attention to the use of these facilities.
California, Mississippi, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Ohio and Washington State are reevaluating the use of long-term isolation and re-evaluating how many prisoners really require it, how long they should be kept there, and how best to move them out.
