Creating Monsters: How Solitary Confinement Hurts the Rest of Us

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/04/Frontline/360812/

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You need to watch only the first five minutes of Solitary Nation, the first of two Frontline documentaries that will air on PBS starting Tuesday. The inmates, corrections officers, and prison bureaucrats all appear stooped and burdened, tamped down, by the oppressive nature of the place in which they spend the bulk of their lives. That's what prison is, of course, but Frontline captures something deeper here.

"This is what they create in here, monsters," one inmate tells Frontline's reporters. "You can't conduct yourself like a human being when they treat you like an animal."

"It's like being buried alive," another prisoner says off camera.

Now, every inmate in the history of the world likely has complained about the conditions of his confinement. But the point of the film, I think—and perhaps the best argument against the continued use of solitary—is that regardless of how inmates feel about it, there is no redeemable value to it to the rest of us.

[Silent3]

1. Solitary confinement or not, our biggest problem is locking up way too many people

End the twisted pack-'em-in incentives of the prison industrial complex, and I think we'd see many prison problems improve.

That said, the alternative to solitary, with prisoners mixing with each other in such a way that so much violence and abuse occurs between prisoners is horrendous too.

Maybe I underestimate what it would be like to be in solitary over time, but I'm fairly introverted in normal life, so I've imagined that if I ever had to be in a prison that I'd rather be in solitary than trying to figure out how to survive mixing in with the general population.

[pipoman]

2. For some inmates solitary is a safety net

For others it is a safety net for the rest of the population. For some it is unjust punishment. How should leaders of gangs be dealt with? They conduct criminal enterprise from general population. ..and not just within the prison they occupy...and few control criminal activity in the entire prison system. Florence ADX houses many leaders of gangs who have terrorized staff and other inmates in places far from where they were being held.

Prison reform should concentrate on inmate safety, reduction of criminal activity inside the prisons, reduction of nonviolent offenders who are incarcerated, making private prisons illegal and segregation of inmates who victimize others.