by Darcia Helle
Humans are social animals. I’m not referring to the more extraverted among us who love parties. And I’m not talking about a preference to occasionally hang out with friends. We humans have an inherent need to socialize. We know, without question, that prolonged isolation causes mild to severe emotional and psychological damage.
Now consider this: Each year in U.S. prisons, more than 80,000 men and women are locked in isolation cells for weeks, months, years, or even decades.
You’re probably thinking these are some really bad people: violent sociopaths with no impulse control. This would be a logical assumption. Isolation cells, segregation, padded cells, or ‘rubber rooms’ were initially built with these people in mind. Then prison officials realized it’s a lot easier to manage a building full of offenders when they’re all locked in individual cells all day, every day. And soon Supermax prisons popped up all over the nation.
Today, the majority of men and women being held in long-term isolation are not high-level threats to prison staff or other inmates. They are schizophrenic, bipolar, and cognitively disabled. They are low-risk “nuisance prisoners” who filed a grievance against the prison or didn’t return a lunch tray on time. And they are minors being held in adult prisons, kept in isolation “for their own safety”.
Imagine you’re an 18-year-old kid who, on a dare, stole a car for a joy ride. Or you’re a 30-year-old woman arrested for possession of a controlled substance. Or, worse, you’ve struggled with lifelong paranoid schizophrenia. You’ve been in prison two days when another inmate shoves you. You shove back. Off to solitary you go.
Now imagine your life for the next five years is this:
Your room is the size of a small closet. Your walls are either padded or concrete. You have a toilet bolted to the floor, a steel door with a slot guards open to shove your food tray in, and, if you’re lucky, that door has a narrow window facing a blank wall across the corridor. Your ‘bed’ is a concrete shelf built into the cell and you’re given a thin mat to sleep on. You’re allowed out of your cell for one hour per day to exercise. You’re taken, alone, to a 20-foot concrete, windowless pen, which only provides you with a larger area to pace. You are completely deprived of natural light. You are not allowed to participate in any group activities and you’re denied access to prison services. You are never permitted to touch another person, occupy the same space as another person, or have normal conversations.
Whether to place inmates in solitary and how long to leave them there is at the sole discretion of prison officials. There is no oversight and there are no appeals.
There is, however, immense emotional, psychological, and physical damage.
Research has shown after only a few days in isolation, EEG readings shift toward abnormal patterns characteristic of delirium. After a few weeks, the person becomes hypersensitive to stimuli. He/she becomes startled and agitated by ordinary sights, sounds and smells. Memory becomes impaired. The person may have fits of anger, chronic anxiety and/or panic attacks. Soon brain function decreases. Sleep disorders set in. Eye muscles atrophy because they are never used for distance vision. Hallucinations become commonplace.
Maybe you’re thinking, So what? These people broke the law and they’re being punished. At least these Supermax prisons and isolation cells save taxpayers money.
Wrong.
Supermax prisons cost two to three times more to build than conventional prisons. And that’s only the beginning. According to one study, the average cost of housing an inmate in solitary is $75,000 per year, while the cost for general population is only $25,000. Supermaxes require more correctional officers, because inmates can do absolutely nothing for themselves. Everything must be delivered to the prisoner, and correctional officers often work in pairs.
An interesting statistic on cost effectiveness comes out of Mississippi. Prisons there diverted the mentally ill inmates out of solitary confinement and reduced their Supermax population by almost 90%. Eventually, they closed the unit altogether. Prison violence rates have since dropped 70%, and that state saves $8 million annually.
We’ve all heard the “revolving door” comment about prisons. Our recidivism rate is sky high, with most estimates approaching 70%. Isolation cells in Supermax prisons will only ensure that number continues to rise. Inmates – human beings – deprived of normal human contact simply cannot reintegrate into society properly. This is a fact. Yet, data from California and Colorado show nearly 40% of inmates are released directly from isolation into our neighborhoods. Numbers in other states show a similar pattern.
We are isolating people for years, destroying their minds, then simply opening the door and setting them free.
I’ll leave you with this final bit of information to contemplate. In 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia became the first to implement solitary confinement. By the late 1800s, documented evidence proved isolation caused inmates to hallucinate, commit suicide, and/or become violently insane. The practice was deemed uniquely cruel and abolished.
In the 1970s, our War on Drugs began filling our prisons at an alarming rate. Overcrowding led to violence. Our answer was Supermax prisons. Solitary confinement with a modern twist. History has taught us nothing.
Please click to below to view Darcia’s Helle’s previous posts:
Al Capone Could Not Bribe the Rock: Alcatraz, Fortress of Doom
Cyberspace, Darknet, Murder-for-Hire and the Invisible Black Machine
Darcia Helle lives in a fictional world with a husband who is sometimes real. Their house is ruled by spoiled dogs and cats and the occasional dust bunny.
Suspense, random blood splatter and mismatched socks consume Darcia’s days. She writes because the characters trespassing through her mind leave her no alternative. Only then are the voices free to haunt someone else’s mind.
Join Darcia in her fictional world: www.QuietFuryBooks.com
The characters await you.