Solitary Confinement and Human Rights Abuses
Solitary confinement is one of the US prison practices found to be a human rights violation during the recent UNHuman Rights review of US compliance with the ICCPR.
The current practice of solitary confinement reaches far beyond the original concepts of the Quakers and Anglicans who promoted the idea. In 1839, members of both traditions recommended that each prisoner be held in a separate cell that would radiate out from a central guard location. The thought was to initiate reform through solitude. The expectation was that those confined to prison would reform through reflection developed during their isolation. The isolation was not intended to be total. The warden was required to visit prisoners daily and the prisoners could consult with chaplains. Isolation was thought to both punish and rehabilitate. The confined were given the opportunity to become penitent when forced to consider their actions during the quiet of isolation. The expectation of prisoner penitence gave way to calling these prisons “penitentiaries”. Eastern (PA) State Penitentiary was hoped to be the model penitentiary influenced by Quaker concepts.
In “Solitary Confinement: A Brief History” by Shelby Biggs, the author reflects that the development of prisons in the early 1800’s removed from communities the power to determine how offenders would be punished. Prisons were considered a more humane method of punishment particularly with the later addition of a rehabilitation component.
Now legendary is Charles Dickens’ 1842 visit to Eastern State (PA) Prison, which was designed with Quakers and Anglican principles in mind. His goal was to assess how the social experiment in punishment and rehabilitation combined with reflection was progressing. Dickens was shocked at the conditions he found. “The system here, is rigid, strict and hopeless solitary confinement,” Dickens concluded. “I believe it…to be cruel and wrong…I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.”
The practice has continued with devastating results. Some states have taken limited measures to reduce the use of solitary confinement. New York has agreed to prohibit the use of solitary confinement (punitive segregation unit) for disciplinary purposes for juveniles and those who are pregnant or developmentally disabled. But serious adverse consequences reach beyond prisoners in those categories. Mary Buser, former Chief of Mental Health at Riker’s Island, wrote about her experiences working with those in solitary confinement and the disturbing mental health consequences on the prisoners she observed. She describes the occupants’ mental health decomposition as “swift”, even where the occupant had no prior mental health diagnosis. Buser describes inmates who cower in corners, sometimes naked. She speaks of blood smeared walls, makeshift nooses and shell shocked faces. Only at the point of impending death or serious injury were inmates removed to a specialized unit at a different facility.
Limiting categories of those who will not be placed into solitary confinement is not enough. Given our prison culture, such “reforms” are slow and insufficient.
Buser concludes: “Having worked ‘behind bars’ for five years in various capacities, I understand the rationale for solitary — the need to safeguard correctional staff, maintain jailhouse order and manage “high risk” inmates. If, however, the United States is truly to be the champion of human rights that Americans say we are, then surely we can find more humane methods of achieving these goals.”