Solitary Confinement Is Cruel and All Too Common | Hacker News Reader

Solitary Confinement Is Cruel and All Too Common

nytimes.com

179 pointszabramow150 comments

I wonder if I am an outlier in that I have a massive paranoia about being thrown into jail randomly because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time or cops executing a warrant on the wrong house.

Maybe it's because I am mixed race and grew up in a poor minority neighborhood but it seems like the system is just eager and waiting to put everyone in it. Kind of like a low grade terror all the time.

Have you read 'The Trial' by Kafka? Maybe you shouldn't, but it's a good read.

Reminds me of the intro to Brazil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSQ5EsbT4cE

I started thinking about this a lot while listening to the last season of Serial. At times, there is enough doubt in the case to think that he might have been just a high school boy who's girlfriend was heinously murdered. Then, next thing you know, he's being arrested and the state is demanding that he account for his whereabouts 6 weeks ago.

I recently went to traffic court where i watched a young central American man get funneled into providing the state with free labor, merely because he was vulnerable and the opportunity was there. Our judicial system is for chewing up poor people. But it was ever thus; high-minded notions of justice cannot be carried by bureaucrats.

I noticed the same thing one time in a very similar circumstance. One guy after another being assigned to state work that very day.

The court is an inefficient way of providing the state with free labor. He could have skipped the court and just gotten a job and started paying income taxes.

Tell it to the prison-industrial complex.

If everybody's metric of success is national maximized social/economic utility, your point would be fine. But that isn't the case. Many people prefer a positional metric, where they'd rather be poor as long as other people are poorer. See, e.g.:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268198...

If the point is money, then yes, you'd be right. But for a lot of people the point is status, not money. Taking a vulnerable or visibly different group of people and forcing them into a subordinate state is going to feel like success to a lot of people.

>Our judicial system is for chewing up poor people

Hyperbolic statement with absolutely no details about this situation? Seems legit.

The last time I was in court (two weeks ago) it was _filled_ with poor people for non-violent victimless crimes. And I was there for something that is NOT a law, written in plain English at DMV.org. But the cop wrote me a ticket so I have to waste countless hours of my life dealing with their shit.

Same deal if you stand in line at a car impound lot. I once got my car towed on a snowy night, one of ~1000 other cars towed that night in Minneapolis (on Christmas Eve no less!).

The line at the impound lot was filled with poorer (looking) people, especially Somali, Hispanic, and Asian people for whom English was not their first language. My dad drove me there and stood in line with me, and I could tell it had a profound effect on his outlook. My dad has always been quite liberal, but being a rich, older white guy living in the suburbs, he hadn't seen firsthand some of the more subtle ways that poor / minority people are disadvantaged by the system.

Are you saying that something is not a law because DMV.org says so, or that the cop thought something was a law because DMV.org said so? DMV.org is not a government website.

To be honest, I'm afraid of travelling (to America even) and of leaving the relative safety of Canada because of that.

I've heard so many stories about people ending up in jail in the USA or Mexico or other countries from things that would be considered minor and them having to fight their way out of it.

Missed bribe there, racist cops there, at least I'm safe home where the only time I have to worry about the police is during protests.

My cousins live in London, Ontario, but spend maybe 1/2 of their time in the states, where their mother (my aunt) was born and raised. They cross the border all of the time.

They love to joke about the Canadian attitudes towards their risk exposure coming into the states; although it has become more frustrating to cross the border, the mythology is a bit hyped.

I would say, however, and they'd probably agree, you'll find a huge variation in policing between regions and urban areas vs rural ones. I'm from the country (now in the city) and rural cops scare me more than urban cops because... hard to express.

>Missed bribe there

Lived in the US my whole life and never had to bribe anyone. Europe? I've bribed people more than a few times to get shit done. Mostly Eastern, but the idea that the US is on par with Mexico via corruption is fairly laughable.

Bribery in the US is definitely NOT a day to day occurrance.

That being said, the US is definitely corrupt, but in the US corruption is legal as long as you follow the corruption rules. For example, I can donate $100K to my favourite political candidate right now and then ask them for favours, totally legal, but yet corrupt.

We're coming up to election season and candidates have already started bragging about who is paying their way (e.g. Wall Street, Koch Brothers, Big Oil, etc) and if anyone doesn't think this type of thing is an investment into future political favours then they're very naive.

PS - While there is corruption in every country, the US's electoral finance rules make it particularly bad.

I've been in a car that's bribed police before. In the Philippines. Officer leaned in, said "I've got a ticket for you". The driver handed him a wad of cash, and the officer let us go. Its how it works over there.

I have never, in my life, encountered bribery on the scale of what goes on in other countries, in the USA.

I worded this poorly. I was aiming the "racist cops" comment at the USA and the "bribable cops" at Mexico.

Please don't use what you hear on the internet to base your option of the USA. Spent my whole life here and I have never once had to bribe anyone period.

If you tried to bribe a cop you would be immediately thrown in jail.

That being said just be respectful and they will be respectful back. Its been working for me for 29 years.

Because only whites can be racist? I understand what you're saying, but phrasing it like that is just silly.

And no, not all cops will bring you in for bribing them; I'm much more pro-cop than most people that blab on the internet, but that doesn't mean there aren't bad ones.

I see that the original comment must have been edited to remove something about racism, but I have to add this elaboration because it so often gets missed:

Of course anyone can be racist, but when the white people have nearly all of the economic and political power, and the black people have nearly none, it doesn't matter if black people are racist, because there are no structures to support that.

Or, put another way, black people might call me "cracker" or "white boy" or whatever, and hate me because I'm white, but I can still walk into a bank and get a home loan. I was never red-lined out of living in a neighborhood at first sight.

Being of a race doesn't prevent you being racist towards it. A black cop can be just as racist to a black person walking down the street as a white cop can. Indeed, I seem to recall hearing on a few occasions that they often are.

The assumption that all a black person can do to be racist is call you (a white male) "cracker" is rather disingenuous.

Based on the current social economic structure of USA, OP's statement is pretty true.

This prank video is like a small example of USA's issues.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U0tDBvdunu0 ...try reversing the ethnicity and neighborhood in this video... the vid would be much shorter and the outcome much worse, I'm sure.

Of course not, and the fact that even black cops treat black people like they're less than human illustrates another important idea: internalized racism. When power structures in society constantly reinforce the idea that black people are worth less, everyone starts to believe it.

Pernicious, isn't it?

It isn't just about name-calling. It's about the systems that keep people disengaged politically and economically, generation after generation. The name-calling is just the surface stuff, and you know, I bet you anything that if people of color actually had a fair shot at anything in this country, the name calling wouldn't matter at all.

As a fellow American citizen, I think their concerns are reasonable. This varies a great deal by city, and one's experience of police can vary a great deal by the extent they decide you look suspicious. Factors there include race, gender, and all sorts of subtle appearance cues that can be mysterious to foreigners.

A sysadmin pal, for example, was walking down the street in a major city dressed in our standard sysadmin shabby with his beloved but somewhat ragged hometown baseball cap. Some cop decided that he looked to be a guy who had just shot a cop. They eventually sorted out the mistake, but my pal needed treatment in a hospital afterward. To this day he can't stand cops.

And that's in a city where I think the police are generally chill. When I lived in Chicago, I learned to treat cops with the deference I'd give to a vigorous, ill-tempered horse. The may have thought I was treating them with respect, but in my case it was a distrust born of observing how they treated other residents.

I'm Canadian and I'd say about 95% of America is almost as safe as Canada. Or at least as safe as Brampton, Ontario (a poorish city, but not crazy).

That last 5% is fucked up though. Detroit itself is beyond fucked up. I used to run a construction site at Jane and Finch (Canada's worst intersection at the time) in 2004-2006 and a couple years later I went through Detroit while picking up my friend's car. No contest between the two. The bad part of Detroit (70% of it) was like a failed 3rd world country. I was literally told to leave the area of town I was in when I got to the closed (at least for people importing a car) boarder.

I got pulled over by cops kinda near that area and you could tell they had an obvious power trip "respect my authority" vibe to them.

But then there is Salt Lake City, or Kansas City, or even poor, but hospitable places like Cleveland. They feel just as nice as Canada. Nice cops. Nice people. No sense of foreboding. America has a huge range of situations.

I'd be inclined to agree, most of America is safe but there are some rough areas.

Atlanta has some places that are more like war zones than anything else. It's just as bad as some places I've seen in Central America. The state patrols around my area have the you better "respect my authority" vibe. I was screamed at because my vehicle smelled like alcohol (due to passengers) when I was being the sober driver for the night.

It's also unfortunate what happened to your friend. I dont fault the police for their methods, I think its a reaction to the realities they have faced. The big problem is they shouldn't be using those methods in every situation.

I fault them. And if more people did instead of making excuses, it would change.

The big problem is that there is literally actually zero accountability around the use of "those methods", not during, not afterward. "Those methods" are used over and over again, sometimes even by the same individuals. There are no repercussions, no consequences, nothing.

How many police officers have faced a judge for assault and murder? Maybe they'd take the responsibility of their position a little more seriously if they actually had to make a case that the action was justified, and go to prison otherwise.

>The big problem is that there is literally actually zero accountability around the use of "those methods", not during, not afterward. "Those methods" are used over and over again, sometimes even by the same individuals. There are no repercussions, no consequences, nothing.

This is certainly a bold statement, and worth trying to dig into, because at least in the case of police shootings, it seems obviously and demonstrably untrue.

Credible statistics on police related shootings are apparently difficult to come by. However, this study by the Washington Post[0] and Bowling Green State University[1] suggests that the ratio of incidents (including accidental shootings and what would be considered legitimate shootings) to convictions is about 1000/1. If taken at face value, the legal system seems unreasonably biased in favor of law enforcement, (certainly, people who aren't cops can't expect those odds) and against non-white victims in particular, But accountability is still not "literally actually zero."

This is an important distinction to make, I believe, because a system in which accountability is difficult, and one in which it doesn't even exist, are vastly different in terms of practical, possible solutions worth discussing. Hyperbole only serves to pour fuel on what is already a volatile subject (especially on the internet, especially among so-called hackers on the internet.)

[0]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/14/1377509/-New-study-...

[1]https://blogs.bgsu.edu/pilproject/2014/08/20/police-crime-in...

Suburban, white, Ivy League-educated, American young adult, who knows his rights and how to act respectful (read "deferential" or "submissive") around police, with a well-off family stuffed with lawyers and law enforcement here.

Arrested on a false charge in an upscale neighborhood while well-dressed and not intoxicated. It took two and a half years of my life, a suspension from school, and over $50,000 before the charge was dismissed with prejudice and the suspension overturned.

The system works, eventually, for some people. But man can a rogue police officer and DA do some damage to you in the mean time. The psychic scars will probably never completely fade.

What was the charge, out of curiosity?

Second degree aggravated assault, simple assault, and terroristic threat. The witness was mentally ill, although it took a long time for the various authorities (police, prosecutor, and school deans) to disclose the documents and video records that demonstrated this (suicide attempt that evening, no less than seven previous and subsequent false allegations, bizarre and contradictory statements smoothed over by the officer, and an attempt to withdraw the allegation a week later, clinical history of bipolar II and borderline personality disorder.) Once disclosed, the case was dismissed.

Did you know the witness before this happened?

There is more to this story you are not telling us. How exactly did the witness identify you?

So you're walking down the street in an upscale neighborhood wearing your Sunday best and.... you get these three charges levied on you?

Feel like there are details missing to this story.

Oh there's a myriad of details missing, to protect both my privacy, and the privacy of the accuser, whom I have come to believe was an unfortunate victim of both their own mental illness and the state.

It's more along the lines of:

I was sitting at friend's house, (quite literally) in my Sunday best. I received a phone call from an acquaintance who was distraught. I arrived at the home, was arrested, placed in handcuffs (double locked behind my back), and held for forty eight hours without food or drink.

I was released after paying an exorbitant bond (did you know you can post bond with a debit card?), followed by a rather insane two and one half years prosecution, against the wishes of everyone involved.

You make this sound like a common occurrence.

Anecdotes work both ways, though. I'm sure hundreds of readers here could say that they've never been falsely accused and had to fight a rogue DA to get their name cleared (sounds like a movie plot).

>sounds like a movie plot

If only you knew the rest of the story... It often felt like I'd been thrown into some bizarre screenwriter's fantasy. But this is real.

My experience suggests the problem is systemic, not isolated. I can only imagine that if I were a poor black kid from the inner city, I would be in prison right now, rather than several years removed from that nightmare.

> You make this sound like a common occurrence.

No, that anecdote plus the fact that the USA has a disproportionate number of people in jails compared to other developed countries makes it sound like a common occurrence.

See this recent HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10091586

From the submission's referenced paper:

The incarceration boom is unprecedented in American history, and unseen anywhere else in the world; traditionally indistinguishable from its peers, the United States is now the world’s largest jailer, both in absolute numbers and in rate. Home to only five percent of the world’s population, it now houses over twenty percent of its prisoners.

I've spent my whole life here as well and have ended up in jail because of bureaucracy. I lost a fair amount of of money and missed several days of work, because of this.

The situation was that I got a minor speeding ticket in another state. Paid the ticket. State didn't update their records and it got marked as not paid. My state arrests me for failure to appear in court, suspends my license, threatened to impound my car, etc... I did nothing wrong in this case. The only way I was able to get it fixed was to talk to the director of the department of transportation for my state. I got lucky basically.

By the way, I'm a white middle aged male, so this isn't anything to do with race. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, just that the issue is systemic and not something that's merely cultural. The US justice system is extremely heavy handed and fairly deficient.

Note that failing to pay traffic fines or show up in traffic court can also result in an arrest warrant in Canada: http://www.slsedmonton.com/criminal/unpaid-fines-and-debt.

A simple point along these lines- if something is commonplace, it generally isn't newsworthy. The contrapositive applies as well.

> Please don't use what you hear on the internet to base your option of the USA.

Isn't that self-contradicting? Then who'll listen to your claims?

How about Wikipedia: "In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...)

So much for "be respectful and they will be respectful back." Such systematic problems aren't about "respect." If an official enemy was so jail-happy, we'd probably not take such a claim seriously. Because we're not so programmed to believe their propaganda.

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

I can't tell if police behavior is getting worse, or whether it was always this bad, and it is just being caught on camera more often, thanks to ubiquitous smartphones. But you can now go on YouTube and watch only new videos of cops behaving badly every waking moment of your life. They shoot dogs. They beat up handcuffed suspects. They arrest protesters for trespassing on public property. They use pepper spray from 30 cm away against nonviolent protesters. They make racist and sexist remarks. They shoot people in the back and drop a weapon next to the body. They literally murder people, on camera, and are not required to take any personal responsibility for it.

You should give a cop no more deference than you would ordinarily give to any other person who could murder you on the spot and get a paid vacation as his only "punishment". Be respectful, and they probably won't kill you, or do a roadside body cavity search, or arrest you for resisting arrest, or drag you to multiple hospitals until they find a doctor willing to comply with their ethically dubious and medically unnecessary requests, or shoot your dog, or simply trash your car while performing a "search".

Be respectful, and they won't punish you for "contempt of cop". The Andy Griffith cop no longer exists. He has been replaced by the "made man" cop.

Your best course of action now is to avoid all police contact altogether, even while they are off duty. If they force you into contact, just keep your mouth shut and leave at your earliest safe opportunity.

My advice to foreigners is to not voluntarily visit the U.S. If you must come, do not stray from the tourist-friendly areas, and try not to be outside of your hotel or other lodgings between 11 PM and 5 AM local time. Write the phone number for your nearest consulate in permanent marker on the inside of your forearm, and make sure it stays legible for the duration of your trip. Purchase a health insurance policy designed for international travelers to the US before you arrive. If you find my advice dubious, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sureshbhai_Patel .

I hope that response was deleted because the author realized that hyperbole exists. Don't actually write that number on your forearm. But do know what it is before you travel.

From that link:

"Former police officer Eric Parker, who is accused of injuring Patel, was fired from the Madison Police Department and charged with third-degree assault. In March 2015, Parker was charged by the FBI with felony civil rights abuse."

More recent updates:

http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2015/02/why_wasn...

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/04/state_charges_delay...

http://whnt.com/2015/09/03/prosecution-rests-in-madison-offi...

I find it somewhat curious that there is apparently no further news coverage of Parker's misdemeanor assault trial after April 29th, which was the original trial date. But I'm not curious enough to pay the ten dollars Alabama charges for online access to court records per case.

Bribe? Give me a break.

I was pointing bribes at Mexico and racist cops at the USA.

Anecdote. I am originally from México, living in the U.S. for over 20 years now where I have not, in all that time, had a problem with police. I've been stopped, and treated with respect. In México as a teen it was not the horror stories that most Americans believe, but well, "less civilized". I travel there on occasion without event always. Except once last year, I made the mistake to drive into México in a black car with tinted windows. I was stopped and interrogated at every opportunity, fined for going 60 Km/hr (40 mi/hr) on the "International" highway. In my experience having an education and being able to communicate coherently will save you from trouble in the US, but not necessarily in Mexico, if you happen to be unfortunate enough to attract the attention of cops, unless you can convince whomever that you have certain connections or "levers" (palanca) that you can use if needed.

You fear entering the USA because you're afraid you'll go to prison? How often do you think random people get through into jail for "things that would be considered minor"? Racist cops are outliers and I've never heard of anyone bribing an officer.

Come to America and your opinion will change almost instantly. The anti-US fear-mongering on this forum is incredible; it's as if all 300+ million of us are living in a dystopian police state where one wrong word gets you thrown in solitary.

Being arrested due to a mistake by police is my only reoccurring nightmare ever since I was 13. Usually it is a bank robbery.

Sadly one of my friends were arrested and convicted of a crime with not one piece of evidence besides one person saying something about them. They could have plea bargained for 18 months but instead they thought I am innocent so might as well be found not guilty. He got 12 years.

Uncorroborated accomplice testimony is insufficient to convict someone. See https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/calcrim/500/708.html, among others.

Why was he convicted? Because the law matters only when it's convenient.

I used to believe that "ignorance of the law is no excuse". I no longer do. The people enforcing the laws (prosecutor, judge, police, etc.) are explicitly protected from misapplying the law. There are excuses for them for not knowing the law, or not applying it correctly.

I claim the same rights as them. If ignorance of the law is an excuse for them, it's an excuse for me.

And yes, on the bare face of it, your friend should have been found not guilty.

I don't want to think what will happen to that "witness" after 12 years..

with not one piece of evidence besides one person saying something about them

There's your evidence. Witnesses are evidence.

No they are not. Humans are too unrealiable. Also some humans lie.

You're operating with a very idiosyncratic and totally impractical definition of "evidence".

So unless you start speaking the same language as everyone else, there's not much use in any discussion.

That doesn't make their statements not evidence. It makes them evidence that can be refuted or doubted, but that's true of most evidence.

(Sorry Long Story)

The witness was 15 years old with a history of making false accusations against both her brothers and two boys at her High School. She was found to have had mutual sex with both boys on the high school campus and those accusations were deemed false. Her brothers were never found to have done anything wrong also false accusations. She than made an accusation against my friend. All this past history that happened in the past year was deemed not applicable to her current accusations. Also what the accusations were changed every time for 6 months with different dates, times and locations and him being re-arrested multiple of times. That didn't matter because my friend couldn't verify where he was at all times the previous 5 months. BTW the accusations were made the Monday before my friends marriage.

The state's expert witnesses for IT were the worst pieces of garbage spewing false statements. There was one conversation on Facebook that was of concern which my friend denied having. It wasn't an illegal conversation (This happened at 2 AM after he announced that he was driving two states away to propose to his present day wife) The IP address was not the same IP as my friends DESKTOP computer. My friends IP was the same the day before and the day after the conversation and for a month prior to that ocnversation. Experts stated that IP addresses are dynamic and change all the time so it is no surprise that the IP address was the same the day before and the day after but different for that one conversation on his desktop computer which was the states story, my friend has proven he was at his apartment at that time. Jury just has to believe whoever they are going to believe. Guilty and in the state a 2nd grade teacher forcibly raped two boys got 5 years. This judge gave him 12 years.

I don't think it's that paranoid. Our criminal justice system is far from perfect. I've heard estimates that up to 10% of people imprisoned are innocent of that particular crime. And just look at the number of people on death row who have been exonerated. Cases that get that much scrutiny should have a zero percent change of being incorrect but that's so far from the truth it's shocking.

Have you made any attempt to estimate the probability of that happening and then compare it to other risks you are able to take without paranoia?

1% of people in America are in jail. I don't know what is illegal. That is way outside of my risk management zone.

The law is more complicated than any one person understands, but I'd bet 99% of the incarcerated population was jailed for things you already know are illegal.

I would rather travel to the back-countries of a lof of European countries than visiting the USA outside tourist spots.

> When the suit was filed in 2012, 500 of these inmates had been held for more than 10 years in tiny, windowless cells with virtually no human contact

That is just... horrifying... evil even.

10 years in solitary confinement... it's just unthinkable what that would do to someone

And just won the appeal in 2015. So 13 years. Alone.

If they are not in solitary confinement, they are being confined with other people.

Would you want to be the confined with someone who has a history of being violent with his cell mates?

The only 2 choices shouldn't be solitary confinement or being beaten/raped/murdered by fellow inmates.

I would have thought that surely most inmates would just want to get their head down and serve out their sentence?

And that's why most inmates are not in solitary confinement.

You are not understanding my comment.

If the violent inmates are not solitary, they are in a cell with YOU. Do you want them in a cell with you, or in solitary?

Extreme false dichotomy. Most people in prison are not violent psychopaths eager to murder anyone they can get their fingers on.

Most people in prison are not in solitary confinement.

Yeah, and most people in prison are not jewish, either. Neither fact is relevant. The person I replied to suggested that people might prefer solitary confinement to the alternative of being housed with someone who will physically brutalize them.

I am the person you replied to and I implied no such thing.

Some reading comprehension is in order.

There do exist other alternatives.

Solitary doesn't just mean single occupancy cells, it means separation from most human contact.

They could easily have groups of cells where inmates are confined individually but can still have non-physical contact with other prisoners.

And as most of those in solitary aren't raving psychotics (mostly they attacked guards or rival gang members, an issue largely due to prison overcrowding) they could be allowed monitored time in the yard with other prisoners.

Considering the inmates in solitary are the ones suing because it is cruel I think that answer is quite apparent. Yes, people would rather be with people even if those people aren't perfect.

Not necessarily.

If I was in prison and could make a case for anything you can bet I'd be the biggest pain in the ass (wrt legal wrangling) I possibly could. I mean, my life is pretty much trashed already, right? No harm in seeing if you can get a reduced time or even a settlement out of it.

That said, I can only imagine that enforced solitude would be pretty awful in its own right.

Solitary wouldn't be used as a punishment if people preferred it. It's nearly universally feared.

I'm not talking about the well being of people in solitary.

I am talking about the well being of OTHER inmates.

>Yes, people would rather be with people even if those people aren't perfect.

So, yes or no, you would want to be in a cell with a "not perfect" person who has killed has last two cellmates?

From the article:

>The offenses that landed them in solitary? Most often, it was evidence that they were "affiliated" with a prison gang, whether or not they had broken any rules.

Solitary isn't being used as a last resort for people who have killed previous cellmates -- it's being used for all sorts of things.

I think solitary makes sense for people who are already unable to coexist with other inmates, but that doesn't seem to be the main use at the moment.

"California will end indefinite solitary sentences. In all, the reforms are expected to reduce the state’s solitary population, which is now over 2,800, by more than half."

So they only ended indefinite solitary sentences. The definite sentences will stay. The main issue this opinion column raises is that it took several hundreds of inmates to form a class action for the change to take effective. The settlement will mean that the issue isn't being ruled as 'cruel or unusual punishment' so there's very little change that is making through the court system in the country.

What do they do with the supermax prisons where all the inmates are in solitary confinement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermax_prison

Just to be blown away read the population in one supermax in Colorado. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence#Notable_current_i...

Scary.

What's scarier is who's inside the prison.

That was my point sorry :)

Solitary confinement is a form of torture. But of course there is no torture in the US. If the US does it, it can't be torture.

Not saying you are wrong, but here's a different perspective:

http://www.hermitary.com/solitude/nietzsche.html

From the conclusion:

>Nietzsche is a complex and provocative thinker, but he is a clear advocate of the role of solitude in every level of human activity, from philosophical and psychological to creative and societal.

Can't do any of those in solitary confinement. Solitude you choose is quite different than being locked in a small room indefinitely.

Nietzsche's concept of solitude has freedom. If you feel like you are going insane, you can talk to real people. You can read books.

The 13th amendment allows for slavery if a person has been convicted of a crime. It makes a lot of sense when you consider prison, especially America's take on it, just a continuation of slavery.

Who do you consider should pay for the food and shelter of criminals? Their victims - society? IMO themselves, through labor, forced if necessary. If that's what you're talking about.

Society should pay. Society has a responsibility to treat everyone - even the lowest of the low - with basic dignity. Society has a responsibility to reintegrate and readjust those it has failed.

People also have a responsibility to Society, they should not steal murder, or any number of other criminal actions.

>Society has a responsibility to reintegrate and readjust those it has failed

Where is the accountability in your world? If I pistol whip somebody in the face and take their wallet, then it sounds like (by your logic) that society has failed that person, rather than that person failed to abide by the shared social contract (to not engage in criminal behavior).

Creating people who are willing to perform such actions would suggest society has failed, yes.

>People also have a responsibility to Society, they should not steal murder, or any number of other criminal actions.

How many are in prison for non-violent actions that harm none but themselves?

I like this point, but it doesn't really refute ManFromUranus' point. You're talking past him.

When we create this nebulous idea of a patriarchal "society" that should guide us in all things, it is easy to blame all of one's shortcomings on society.

"Hey, I didn't get into that college!" "Society has failed you, sorry."

"Hey, I didn't win that track meet!" "Sorry, society will do it's best to not let you down in the future."

I think that if you ever try to cash in on what society owes you, you will find yourself woefully disappointed.

Hasn't work been found to be rehabilitating?

(perhaps not backbreaking slave labor, but stamping license plates doesn't seem cruel and unusual)

Work that gives job skills helps because many criminals are caught in a cycle. Basic education would work as well, perhaps even better.

The problem is that the work they done is used to replace standard jobs and to make a decent profit for those in the chain, which creates a perverse incentive where you now have those who wish for more prisoners as they will make more money. We already have a problem with overcriminalization of actions.

That's kind of an unsolvable problem.

There has to be some incentive for people to go through the trouble to use prisoner labor. If you take away that incentive there won't be any work for them, which seems like a loss if the ability to work for modest pay is good for them.

In general you would hope a handful of employers who like using prisoner labor wouldn't have so much sway in the country as to single-handedly crank up the incarcerated population for their own gain.

Correct. And society has the responsibility to educate everyone and give them enough of a chance, so that they have no reason to go haywire.

If you want to pay it, go for it. Don't force others - specially their victims - to do so. I imagine, from your point of view, you don't live in a country with high criminality.

Another thing not mentioned in the article is the fact that a lot of small jails in the US have instituted a 23-hour lockdown policy, similar to super max prisons. So now socializing and free time out of your cell is rare, and lockup is the norm. I don't think they truly care too much about rehabilitation, so much as they care about control. Just my humble opinion.

When you have a building designed for 500 people, and hold 750 every day, you do what you have to to avoid large-scale violence. I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying why it exists.

Prison overcrowding is a thing across the US.

Even with such limitations to prevent violence, it's extremely easy and cheap, today, in the digital age, to enable communication between prisoners.

Yes that's exactly why, and I do have empathy for the situation. That's why I mentioned the control part. I don't mean that they would rather be oppressive than help. What I really mean is they simply don't have time or money to worry about what happens to these people, because just maintaining control is hard enough. Just keeping the prisoners safe, while keeping yourself, and society safe also, is a very tough job.

Solitary confinement is a violation of international human rights and should be treated accordingly.

The US is a country in which there are people and companies profiting off of the imprisonment of human beings. So I wouldn't expect this to change completely for the better for quite some time.

Does anyone seriously doubt that the use of prolonged solitary confinement will be listed in the history books alongside other examples of state-sponsored torture, slavery, and terrorism?

I'm not going to make any cliched remarks about karma here, but the United States will have to deal with the consequences of its actions eventually.

Ironically, our own history books are filled with such redemption stories, which forms the basis of the ludicrous exceptionalism that so infects rational discourse about most anything these days.

For those looking for more, there's a lot of data and reporting on prison privatization, and its impact on policies like solitary confinement, up here:

https://www.muckrock.com/project/the-private-prison-project-...

Death sentence is considered harsher than imprisonment for life, right? It includes paying for your crimes with all your time and your existance.

What if, in the future, it becomes possible to serve a x year sentence in a chemically induced coma or such, in a way taking away your existance too temporarily? Wouldn't that be a milder punishment because the element of "serving time" is no longer there?

Time still passes when you're in a coma, you're just not aware of it.

Of course time passes. My point was that in a way, in that situation you are paying with your time and your existance, as opposed to a "normal" imprisonment where you only pay with your time. I also meant to raise the question whether the loss of your existance holds a higher value than your awareness of time served as a crime-paying currency.

I'd rather be in solitary than suddenly wake up and find that the world, and I, had aged 40 years.

IMO that's more cruel, but obviously that's an opinion.

Like in 'Demolition man', only that there it also have its drawbacks.

It seems like that would take away any rehabilitative effect prison might have. Convicted of a crime, go to sleep, wake up ready to continue committing crimes.

Or it would actually rehabilitate. The current prison climate arguably does the opposite of rehabilitation.

Except that prison doesn't rehabilitate at all: it does the opposite and makes people worse. The rehabilitative theory of justice is essentially nonexistent in the US, nobody even pretends. Instead it's about punishment/retribution and "keeping them off the streets" during the period of their sentence. The coma solves the second concern, but isn't cruel enough to solve the first so I don't think you'll ever see it accepted in the US.

Prison should serve two goals. It should rehabilitate those who can be, and it should sequester away the people who are too mentally unstable to be in the general populace. These should be two separate institutions. Yes, there's a punishment aspect for being away from people, but that shouldn't be the main goal.

Jails, on the other hand, should be terrible places for people who have been convicted of crimes and will be there for short stays, but they should have a time limit for how long someone can be there (longer than that, go to the prison to get your rehab). Slap them hard enough on the wrist and hope they get the message.

I would be interested in seeing the Supreme Court's rationale that solitary confinement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The four principles guiding the court are as follows from Wikipedia:

The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity," especially torture.

"A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion."

"A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society."

"A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary."

The Eighth Amendment was copied virtually verbatim from the English Bill of Rights and wasn't actually used to proclaim a particular punishment was unconstitutional until 1910, 119 years after the American Bill of Rights was ratified. Since then, the principles of "proportionality" and "evolving standards of decency" are evolving to ascertain constitutionality questions. Neither principle appears to do the trick.

Of the four principles above, only the first seems to apply. So the Court will have to declare that solitary confinement is torture in order to stop its widespread use. As seen, the Court has historically been cautious in declaring punishments unconstitutional, waiting until the battle has already been mostly fought in the sphere of public opinion.

Given the stances the Court has taken concerning the death penalty, I predict that no sweeping, immediate prohibitions will take place, rather the Court will apply largely ineffectual provisions to the imposition of solitary confinement.

For example, the Court has ruled in 2002 that capital punishment is constitutionally cruel and unusual when applied to inmates with intellectual disabilities. Georgia promptly responded by making it virtually impossible to obtain a judgment.

I'm glad as a society we're starting to look at how we deter crime and how we manage convicted criminals. I hope we learn to not only take people who are danger to society out of circulation, but once incarcerated work to have them become useful when they reenter the general population.

For too long it has resembled third world punishment models. The objective should be mainly to improve safety and to that end reeducate, reform, inculcate, etc. in order to make reentry viable.

That said, if it's useful to monitor electronically to ensure compliance, I'm okay since breaking social norms come with consequences like incarceration, and reform, etc then electronic monitoring during the probatory period. But we should put great effort into making those people useful, rather than the traditional outcasts we've made them to be post release.

May be solitary confinement should replace capital punishment.

This is what probably will happen in the southern states if capital punishment is found to be unconstitutional again.

The people in power in the south believe that prison time never rehabilitates, and prison's sole purpose is to punish. If the death penalty option is taken away, they'll try to make prison life as difficult as possible for people convicted of capital murder.

This isn't people in the south who believe this, it's most people across the US who are involved in the non-defense side of the CJ system. And they believe it doesn't rehabilitate because it's a fact that it doesn't, the only fault we can find with them is that they believe it shouldn't.

If prison is for punishment, then this makes sense: solitary confinement is a punishment worse than death.

I don't think solitary would be that bad with Internet access and TV. Maybe the problem isn't solitary but that they don't get these things. Also I would prefer not to have a cellmate in prison.

Internet gives you a way to communicate. For some it is the main way of doing so, they function normally( more or less ), and they aren't even in prison.

It would go against their "policy" of isolating prisoners, however unsuccessful it is at rehabilitation.

Without any agenda, I suggest you research why some prisoners are in permanent isolation.

A large percentage of them are there because they assault/murder other inmates or guards.

A cage with bars would be better than isolation.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confine...

"four years ago Pennington was "validated" by prison staff as an associate of a prison gang (one formed on the inside, as opposed to a street gang). That's the reason he and thousands of others are in the SHU with no exit date."

"Gang evidence comes in countless forms. Possession of Machiavelli's The Prince, Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power, or Sun Tzu's The Art of War has been invoked as evidence. One inmate's validation includes a Christmas card with stars drawn on it—alleged gang symbols—among Hershey's Kisses and a candy cane. Another included a poetry booklet the inmate had coauthored with a validated BGF member. One poem reflected on what it was like to feel human touch after 14 years and another warned against spreading HIV. The only reference to violence was the line, "this senseless dying gotta end.""

"THE DECISION to put a man in solitary indefinitely is made at internal hearings that last, prisoners say, about 20 minutes. They are closed-door affairs. CDCR told me I couldn't witness one. No one can."

"At one point he initiated a hunger strike that involved 120 inmates. Two days later, he was put in ad-seg for "conspiracy to assault staff." The claim was based on confidential information that the person in charge of reviewing ad-seg assignments later found did not exist; it couldn't be found anywhere in his file. He spent a year in isolation."

e: to state the point explicitly, few conclusions can be drawn from the official records because the standard of evidence is near zero, the guards can write anything they like, and they do.

Okay.

So, what about the others? Putting forth several (dozens?) cases where solitary was wrongly imposed does in no way make that case for the majority, now does it?

Given that logic, you could make the argument for a single incident of <pick a color> person killing a <pick a different color> person to mean that all <pick a color> people are raving racist murderers.

Personally, I'm not in favour of prison for violent offenders.

Solitary confinement isn't just a single occupancy cell. Generally it means a cell where the prisoner is isolated from other prisoners.

What drives people crazy is not even being able to talk to another human being.

A cellmate and no contact with people ever are different things though. You don't even see the guards when food is delivered, it's shoved through a hole in the door. Recreation meant being in a concrete walled yard alone. It's literally worse than a modern zoo.

I start to get a bit cabin-feverish on the odd weekend when most of my friends are out of town and I spend a couple of days alone...and even then I talk to a few people. It feels awful just imagining what it would be like to spend years in solitary confinement. A form of hell for sure.

Why am I hearing different stories? Some feel like prisoners are being treated too well, some feel like they are being mistreated... and isn't the fact being in a prison with all your freedom being taken away is cruel and all too usual, too? I'm so confused about this discussion.

My theory is that if I see someone's arm being broken as a form of punishment, the pain and suffering is readily visible, which triggers a sort of empathetic reaction.

But if I see someone in a windowless room by themselves, it's easy to dismiss that as "not so bad". I could even rationalize is and say "I'm an introvert and like quiet" or "general population is probably less safe, this would be better for me". There is no understanding of what it is like to spend weeks (which would do me in, let alone months or years) locked in a cage with no natural light, no calendar, a light that is never turned off and no conversation with anyone else.

Similarly, I've heard and read many people claim waterboarding isn't torture because "all they need to do is hold their breath, they should rationalize to themselves that the captors aren't actually trying to drown them". I believe solitary confinement is cruel because of the psychological effect and shouldn't be used as it is today for the same reasons I think mock executions shouldn't be either. (Sure, you don't kill the person, but you're still psychologically torturing them.)

If you don't believe that humans are social animals and need to interact with other humans on a regular basis, read about feral children [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

But what if they gonna stab somebody or somebody gonna stab them? I can see the purpose of solitary confinement. It might have been misused (like everything else). If the solution is better trained prison guard, or an alternative "nicer confine area" which cost more tax money, it seems pointless. Of course we need better prison guard operation process, but all you gonna get is "they are trying their best" kind of answer.

Maybe you're hearing different stories because you're listening to more than one person.

Am I in minority to be the kind of person that would prefer serving something like a 1-5 years sentence in solitary instead of a regular american prison

(Yeah, probably at a 5 years limit or something like that it would be too much and it be psychologically impossible for you to come back to society...)

I take it you've never been to solitary then?

There's a reason even the most hardened criminals quake with fear at the notion of being put in "The Hole". Isolation grinds away at your mind until you fall apart.

At least in gen-pop you can find someone to talk to, even if they may try to kill you when you turn away.

Respectfully, this is spoken like someone who doesn't realize what solitary confinement actually entails, nor is familiar with the rich body of literature on the subject.