Extraordinary Confinement Or Isolation In Juvenile Prisons

The United States is home to half of the world’s total imprisoned population (BBC News). In the nineteenth century, solitary confinement was thought to promote reform in prisoners. However, modern research suggests that locking a human being in a jail cell the size of a handicap bathroom stall for more than 22 hours a day does more harm than good. In spite of these scientific discoveries, prisons in the United States continue to use solitary confinement as a method of incarceration. Due to the negative impact prolonged solitude has on the human mind, solitary confinement should be outlawed as a form of torture.

Within juvenile detention facilities, staff place children in isolation for varying periods of time, ranging from hours to months. The reasons staff place children in solitary confinement cells vary widely from one facility to the next, and even from one staff to another at the same facility. Employees often place a youth in isolation because it is the easiest and fastest way to ensure facility security. Some rationales for the practice are: safety, security, disciplinary, administrative, protective and medical. Using this method to control a youth’s behavior or for a disciplinary reason is very common. Experts conclude this practice is both widespread and underreported. Staff use solitary confinement as a security management tool; until more effective solutions are available and implemented, youth will continue to experience substantial negative repercussions of being confined in a solitary cell.

Solitary confinement, in my opinion, is cruel and unusual punishment. If there was not a mental-health crisis in America, and there was in fact a rehabilitation-focused prison system, solitary confinement would be greatly reduced and used much more sparingly. What is the point of driving people to madness by putting them in isolation? It would be so much cheaper for tax payers to change the system to a more effective one that actually reduces

Given these inconsistencies, mass imprisonment has introduced the criminalization of minority racial status, behavioral well-being issue, and destitution. Additional frustrating, the procedure of imprisonment worsens drawback and vulnerabilities among these as of now minimized gatherings (Clear, 2007; Roberts, 2004; Sampson and Loeffler, 2010). Once detained, a man 's entrance to the routine method for a citizenry that advance distance from wrongdoing is for all time disturbed (Reverse social work 's disregard of justice-included adults: The crossing point and a plan, 2012). At present, there are more than 40,000 state and neighborhood statutes that boycott individuals with histories of detainment from access to instruction, livelihood, lodging, and other social and wellbeing administrations accessible to the overall population (Legal Action Center, 2009). Kids with detained guardians will probably have behavioral and passionate issues and are six times more prone to be imprisoned sometime down the road.

Some might argue that solitary confinement is actually effective and has its benefits, however this is not the case since this punishment only seems to make criminals much more dangerous when they leave prison than they were before and research shows that inmates who left solitary confinement experience increased anger and end up committing the kind of criminality that society is looking to prevent by using this method of punishment. Thus, solitary confinement ultimately fails as a rehabilitative measure, and as a way to "settle down" problematic

UID: 11316754 CCJS452 Spring 2017 Group 7 Solitary Confinement Op-Ed Group 7 “Prison within prison”. That’s one way that correctional officials described solitary confinement. An average of twenty-two hours in a small, isolated cell is the daily enduring of a prisoner in solitary confinement. This movement began back in the 1800s, however, over the last two hundred or so years, heads still clash over the use of this method. Based on the research that I have conducted, I undoubtedly support the removal of solitary confinement in prisons.

“Expert Frank Porporino summarized some of the literature on prison affects stating ‘the evidence indicates that imprisonment is not generally or uniformly devastating’.” When even experts think that prison overcrowding is not devastating the prisoners that shows a lot. This means that not only is it not cruel and unusual, it isn’t going to change them any more than a smaller populated prison

Impact of Solitary Confinement on Juvenile Offenders According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the number of juveniles held in adult facilities has quadrupled since 1990 and ranges from seventy to ninety percent of the proportion of inmates. Approximately, two hundred thousand minors are sentenced to juvenile facilities, jails, and prisons (Rodriquez, 2016). Many of these juveniles are held in solitary confinement. Today the term solitary confinement has been replaced with segregation or restrictive housing to make it seem as if this indeterminate punishment is not as severe.

The article, The Steep Costs of Keeping Juveniles in Adult Prisons by Jessica Lahey states that “due to the imbalance of power between children and adults, not to mention between children and prison staff, sexual abuse of juveniles in adult prison is underreported; fewer than one in 10 of the juveniles surveyed reported their abuse.” ( ). The adult prison is not safe because of the abuses between the staff and juvenile, they need to be aware of what happens in the adult system. Lahey wants to show how dangerous the adult system is by stating what actually happens in prison to the juveniles because of the adult prisoners and the staff. Lahey also explains about how the lack of services and safety, “juveniles housed in adult prisons are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than juveniles housed apart from adult offenders.”

It also provides support for those who believe solitary confinement should not be a punishment in jail. It has

Within this quote we see that in St. Clair prison, inmates get raped and stabbed. These are reasons why prisons should be reformed. Prisoners shouldn’t be hurt for whatsoever problems. Conversely, Penal Reform International article suggested different reasons to reform prisons one that stood out to reform the particular prison in Alabama was this, Provide a healthy, safe environment. “Spaces that are filled with sunlight, outside views, therapeutic color schemes and normalized materials, encourage inmates’ participation, reduce stress, incidents and assaults and decrease staff absenteeism.”

Major Ethical Issues of Solitary Confinement Solitary confinement can affect a person’s physical and mental health simply because it deprives an individual of their need to interact with others on a daily basis. Solitary confinement, which is used to restrain violent and volatile inmates from the general prison population, is done in increments ranging from several months to years. In an article retrieved from the American Psychological Association, ‘Alone, in ‘the Hole’’, the author states that, “for most of the 20th century, prisoners' stays in solitary confinement were relatively short.” This was the standing rule, in which inmates visited what is known as ‘the hole’, for several weeks to months. As time went by, the average length of stay

The United States Government spends a lot of money($75 billion) on locking people up and helping big businesses than helping prisoners. Many prisoners probably spend hours, days, or probably months in solitary confinement. Once they get out of solitary confinement the prisoners behavior changes like they won’t talk to no one and they just rather be by themselves cause they can’t be around big groups of people cause that 's what solitary confinement does to the mind of people. Haney’s research has shown “that many prisoners in supermax units experience extremely high levels of anxiety and other negative emotions.

Solitary confinement should be abolished all across the United States because of the severe negative effects it has on prisoners. A negative effect of solitary confinement that can occur is that a prisoner can become depressed and suicidal. In a popular case in New York, a sixteen year old boy named Kalief Browder, spent over three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. After he was arrested in 2010, he spent more than 1,000 days in Rikers waiting for a trial that was never given to him.

According to Department of corrections and rehabilitation there is approximately 2.3 million adult offenders currently detained and which consist of 316,229 prisoners which are overseen by correctional officers on an ongoing basis costing on an average of $49 per prisoner, additionally their current budget is approximately $11 billion, which is distributed between 33 state prisons, 40 camps, as well as 12 community correctional facilities.