Indefinite solitary confinement in Canadian prisons ruled unconstitutional
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
My experience is obviously atypical though. I saw many people mentally deteriorate, attempt suicide, and essentially give up hope in life while under this sanction. What is worse, the state at that time was imposing a truly inhumane punishment on the rastafarian community within prisons. Due to the rastas not following prison grooming habits by refusing to shave off their dreadlocks, the prison system moved a group of them into the hole. When I left it, some had been there for 10 years straight. I can assure you that many of these men were deeply disturbed.
I was lucky in that I have a psychology that can endure this sort of abuse and come out of it stronger, but most people are not wired like this. Given what I have seen, this really is tantamount to torture. I wish so much that normal US citizens would tour a prison and see what this does to people, because maybe then this would be outlawed.
I'm really glad you turned things around. Perhaps one day you can write a book about your experience, perhaps under a pseudonym.
[op] > I spent the time focused on mathematics and actually became a decent analyst near the end of it.
Finally, a one-path track to mathematical competence
it didn't even occur to me that you could tour a prison and see much of anything. how would you expect the effects of solitary confinement to be visible during a tour?
I'll also say that I was speaking rhetorically, you generally can't visit a prison and certainly not the hole. This should be allowed though, people need to see what this does to people.
Holy crap. That's torture. Good to see you still in one piece.
> Given what I have seen, this really is tantamount to torture.
It is torture.
Would you mind sharing more on your learning experience in solitude?
What books/resources you had at your disposal?
What was it like having to grok things without being able to ping-pong on understanding with peers (in what would be a study group)?
EDIT: line breaks.
My learning method was to try to get up to three texts on the same subject, so I could compare different treatments of the material. This was beneficial because if one text was unclear, I could compare with how the other texts explained this concept and it would hopefully dawn upon me what is right and makes sense. Other than that, I can say that I was at it 8 to 10 hours a day and in many respects, it was my one form of entertainment. I solved PDE's or proved theorems like other people did sudoku or crosswords. I looked at the problems as puzzles and tried very hard to solve them because it was all I had that was amusing. I also became very aware of how beautiful mathematics is and I truly began to love it. That passion helped a lot.
This reminds me of a similar thing you see with people who manage to escape the trap of abusive or just otherwise bad parents. Many people fall into mimicking those same behaviors later in life, or are just so psychologically damaged by them that it significantly hampers their future quality of life. Of course, some people do manage to have positive, productive lives despite terrible childhood experiences, but on average those who do tend to have above-average intelligence; they're able to rationalize what happened to them, and thereby have some control over its effects.
I'm just surprised they allowed you to read at all. Is it common?
Also, how old were you then?
That seems to go against what Wikipedia says? It says it's primarily about punishment rather than safety:
> [Solitary confinement] is mostly employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, usually for violations of prison regulations. However, it is also used as an additional measure of protection for vulnerable inmates.
Well, you get all the way to the standard model, so not so bad. I suppose the book quality might have been a problem though.
EDIT: I'll add to this that marijuana was one of the things that helped me in prison. It really did function as a medicine at times, letting me drift away from the craziness of my situation and think about myself and what I wanted to become and the person I wanted to be. I think that helped me to internally rehabilitate myself and become the person I am today.
Don't sugar coat the reprehensible to sound agreeable.
Its not. we do not live in a Civilized Country (the USA) we live in a Barbaric Nation with as the facade of civility painted over the Barbarism
You can’t have the president of a civilized nation threatening nuclear war because he woke up on the wrong side of bed.
I can’t believe you got solidarity for marijuana. How do you feel that now it’s legal in so many states?
Such treatment, and for such BS reason (grooming), even of convicted murderers and such, shows a terrible medieval society.
Those responsible for this should have gone into jail themselves in a civilized society.
In the name of being "tough on crime", people convicted of non-violent felonies are often stripped of the Constitutional right to vote, and find it difficult to obtain gainful, legal employment for years after they have finished serving their sentences.
And then we wonder why recidivism is such a problem in the US...
1. The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment.
Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than even draconian punishment.
2. Sending an individual convicted of a crime to prison isn’t a very effective way to deter crime.
Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, but prison sentences (particularly long sentences) are unlikely to deter future crime. Prisons actually may have the opposite effect: Inmates learn more effective crime strategies from each other, and time spent in prison may desensitize many to the threat of future imprisonment.
3. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished.
The police deter crime when they do things that strengthen a criminal’s perception of the certainty of being caught. Strategies that use the police as “sentinels,” such as hot spots policing, are particularly effective. A criminal’s behavior is more likely to be influenced by seeing a police officer with handcuffs and a radio than by a new law increasing penalties.
4. Increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime.
Laws and policies designed to deter crime by focusing mainly on increasing the severity of punishment are ineffective partly because criminals know little about the sanctions for specific crimes.
More severe punishments do not “chasten” individuals convicted of crimes, and prisons may exacerbate recidivism.
See Understanding the Relationship Between Sentencing and Deterrence [1] for additional discussion on prison as an ineffective deterrent.
5. There is no proof that the death penalty deters criminals.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, "Research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment is uninformative about whether capital punishment increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates."
[1] https://nij.gov/five-things/Pages/deterrence.aspx#addenda
Because of that alone, it's likely you'll lose your job, your house, almost all your possessions.
I feel like most stuff on top of that doesn't really change the calculus too much, because even being locked in the nicest prison in the world is not great for an average person.
(Rich people it's a bit different because they have the resources to handle this)
Seems like when you’ve got nothing to lose, one may go to an extreme.
The US has a track record of punishing people of color disproportionately. We have the term jury nullification to describe one means for ordinary people to engage in peaceful non cooperation. During Prohibition, lots of ordinary people looked the other way so the mafia could make alcohol available. It basically gave money and power to the mob to make alcohol illegal. In Asia, Martial Arts were born due to extremes of laws forbidding people from having weapons.
The more unreasonable the government becomes, the more creative the people get in quietly saying "Fuck you. No." Or they eventually outright rebel. The first thing that happens when a government is overthrown is they empty the prisons on the assumption that most prisoners are really political prisoners, regardless of what they were convicted of.
It's much more effective to have small, immediate certain punishments than disproportionately large punishments in a small fraction of cases. One reason for this is that humans are not good at estimating expected values, and vastly underestimate low probabilities.
Here, I'll finish the rest of this exchange for us:
You: "I can't BELIEVE you are comparing the U.S. to less prosperous countries and Russia, run by a criminal. This goes to show you how terrible America is! Don't you care about pain and suffering? Don't you want criminals to be able to reform?!"
Me: "Yeah that's not what I was talking about. My point is that you are exaggerating to an absurd degree about how bad US prisons are."
You: <continues to not respond to my point, accuse me of character flaws, shoehorns in more tangential political points>
There, saved us both the time.
"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
It's a tiresome strawman. Really.
You know what the real point of prison is--no matter the stated goal? It's not punishment or rehabilitation or karmic realignment or the state defusing vigilantism or profiteering or any of that. (Oh, they are elements to be sure...) But the real reason for prison is sequestration. That's it. Just taking the people most likely to be dangerous, based on their own actions, and minimizing future risk. It's not cruel or righteous, but strictly practical.
I suspect every prison in the US (or nearly so) imposes solitary confinement on inmates. In that regard, every prison has torture chambers, at least as considered by the Canadian judge whose ruling the article is about.
This is completely at odds with the long sentences meted out for possession of small quantities of drugs in the United States. Whom, exactly, are pot users dangerous to? How is paying to keep them in prison for 10+ years in any way practical?
And if you think solitary confinement is a nightmare, how about putting 2 people in a solitary confinement cell?
>...Imagine living in a cell that's smaller than a parking space — with a homicidal roommate.
>...With a toilet, sink, shelf, and beds, the men were left with a sliver of space about a foot-and-a-half wide to maneuver around each other. If one stood, the other had to sit. They could palm both walls without fully extending their arms. There was no natural light, just a fluorescent bulb and small Plexiglas windows that looked out onto the hall. The solid door muffled the cacophony of shouting and door-banging ricocheting off the tier. It also blocked ventilation.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/24/the-deadly-con...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/opinion/solitary-confinem...
US likes to shit over Canada but I have to say Canada very much seems like a civilized country while US is going reverse.
Intuitively I would say that I were locked together in a cell with some other inmate, i would be a much worse fate than if I were locked in solitary confinement. Being locked in solitary confinement is surely not a nice fate, but as Sartre expressed it: "Hell is other people". In this sense I pretty surely would consider being locked with another inmate in a cell as the real "hell on earth".
So what is so bad about solitary confinement in comparison to non-solitary confinement? As I said: If I were to choose, I would immediately choose solitary confinement by far.
As a concrete box, usually windowless and monotone, solitary confinement is a form of sensory deprivation. Studies of its effects on mental health are similar to that of extended sensory deprivation. Some units like this offer books; many don’t. Fee to none offer radio or television. Inmates have been known to suffer hallucinations in solitary.
Two, it renders prisoners even more vulnerable to abuse by officers than even regular inmates. There is no one to see what happens to you. The stress and its effects on your body are borne whether or not you are ultimately victimized.
Three, Sartre can say what he likes, but humans are social creatures. By and large, cutting off social contact is a reliable way to induce depression and anxiety. Indeed, inmates in solitary often develop severe symptoms of depression and anxiety, which may become long-lasting or permanent. These inmates are at a massively increased risk of suicide. It has been argued that solitary doesn’t create mental disease, it just massively exacerbated underlying mental disease. But since some measure of depression and anxiety is extraordinarily common in inmates, I consider that a meaningless distinction.
Four, just as an empirical matter, there are a pile of studies on the negative mental health effects of solitary confinement. Much like a math proof, “it’s true because it’s true.”
I did not know this (as a non-native speaker of English I just knew "solitary" - "alone"). It is well-known to me that lack of daylight cycle etc. for a longer time can cause medical conditions.
> Two, it renders prisoners even more vulnerable to abuse by officers than even regular inmates.
A really good argument. Accepted.
> Four, just as an empirical matter, there are a pile of studies on the negative mental health effects of solitary confinement. Much like a math proof, “it’s true because it’s true.”
This only shows that for the "average person" it causes problems.
Some prisons have gotten around the requirement that prisoners be exposed to daylight by placing the windows where they cannot be seen, but some of the light can be from the cell. That way they can be say they're providing daylight, it's just that the prisoners cannot see a window. Sometimes it seems that the people who runs prisons are just as sick in the head as they people inside them.
The problem with solitary confinement isn't the cell per se, but that you are locked in your cell all day, every day for months (years) on end. The only human contact you have is limited contact with the guards. If you are lucky you get 30 minutes in the yard. Alone. Over time that can drive anyone insane.
The alternative is not just "locked in with another inmate." Inmates can interact with much broader groups at various times of the day, have access to books, hobby items, games, gyms, etc.
So now ask yourself -- would you choose solitary confinement over the alternative?
Just you, and your mind, for a long time.
I'm an introvert, and I work from home. I've noticed, though, that I tend to feel a bit....off, if I've had zero social contact in a given day or set of days. Doesn't have to be much, even buying something at a shop is enough.
I can't imagine going for months and years on end.
I am pretty convinced that this would not be a serious problem for me. It's clearly not comfortable, but also not something that I intuitively would consider as a serious problem to me (perhaps it would be, but intuitively I have a hard time imagining it).
When I think about it, I would probably do lots of long meditation sessions - this sounds like a good way to pass this long time alone. Or exercises to keep the body in shape if possible (see below).
What nevertheless does sound plausible to me is that being alone for such a long time can cause lots of problems for resocialization.
> And often from light, fresh air
This sounds a lot more like a problem to me.
> exercise, and possibly even reading materials.
Serious question for people who know more about prisons: Why is exercise impossible? I mean exercises that need no further sports equipment, such as push-ups, sit-ups etc.
In my own comment, I wasn't clear enough that I also had this in mind. There's a lot you can do to make your own environment comfortable. In prison solitary, nothing at all.
Coincidentally, I just finished reading this book. It gives an incredible view into the mind of a hostage kept in similar conditions: https://www.amazon.com/Hostage-Guy-Delisle/dp/1770462791/
(On the off chance you read French, it's originally in that language, and probably better to read that way if you can)
I picked it up for bedtime reading and couldn't put it down. I read the entire thing, into the middle of the night.
I also accept arkades' reaaly good argument that solitary confinement makes you a lot more vulnerable to abuse by officers.
It is quite plausible that in a different time I would have lived such a life. Sometimes I think about the question what the analogue of such a life would be in an extremely technology-pervaded science-fiction society (think for example cyberpunk or cypherpunk), e.g. how people can "leave" society without leaving all the technology that comes with it. :-)
> Are you asking if that is possible, or if everyone is like that? Because yes, you could actually be like that, and no, most people aren't like that.
I am asking what the problems are that "normal" people have with such a life. I am talking about the psychological problems. Other posters here have very plausibly explained to me how other circumstances of jails that accompany solitary confinement can plausibly explain lots of psychological problems of solitary confinement. But I still cannot imagine how being alone per se can cause you serious psychological trouble (I would describe this at most as "inconvenient"): As I already wrote this does not contradict that I accept that being alone for such a long problem can easily cause problems for reintegration into society after the jail time.
As the article states, 'disciplinary segregation' is a maximum of 30 days, where 'administrative segregation' is left up to warden.
What the fuck. I mean, thanks to Judge Leask for invalidating this practice - but that part is utter nonsense and causes up to a year of further suffering for affected people. They're not going to walk around in society so what is being threatened here?!
That's not to say that in the meantime, it's the status quo. Corrections Canada has essentially been put on notice, so any use of solitary going forward is going to be under more scrutiny, and hopefully some aspects of the decision (like not having the right to counsel during segregation hearings) will be corrected sooner than that.
Solitary confinement is obviously meant to be torture. It's punishment within an organization where people are already being punished just by being there.
1. In a "day room" with 5-8 others. It also had a TV. The television was a blessing and a curse. Since I wasn't the only one in the cell, I didn't have control over it, so it just blared for 12 hours straight. You couldn't leave the room and take a break from it, so it became hard to deal with at times. That room had a bathroom with a door on it, which was nice. With five people in the room it was tolerable. We all had mats on the floor. Once we were up past 5 or 6, it was mat to mat with hardly any room to maneuver. The worst part of this room was that the lights never turned off completely. It was agonizing trying to fall asleep with fluorescents on all night. One nice thing: there were windows up near the ceiling that reflected light onto the wall throughout the day. It's amazing how meaningful a bit of light becomes when you're stuck in a room for 52 hours straight.
2. I only spent one weekend by myself in solitary. It was a tiny, filthy cell. There was only enough space for my mat with just enough room left to step around it. The edges of my sheet were black by the end of the weekend. This was a rough weekend. They turned the lights off around 9pm, which was an improvement over the day room. I meditated, that helped. I could feel my mind start to warp and unravel during the weekend, so I can't imagine how others do it for weeks on end. Mid weekend a guard took pity on me and handed me a book. I had to pace myself reading it, trying to make it last.
3. Other weekends were spent in cells that were a bit wider. Two inmates to a cell, bunk beds so we weren't on the floor. This wasn't too bad, though it had a real dungeon quality to it with beige metal walls and giant rivets. No privacy when using the washroom - it was right next to the beds so you're face is a couple of feet away from your roommate's bed when you're on the toilet. The ceilings where fairly high, with a tiny window letting in a bit of light. You couldn't see out of it. It was frustrating, because you could see it used to be a full window, but they'd covered up most of it. When it got dark, the bottom of dropped out of me and I was overcome with a really profound sadness.
4. The dorm was the best experience by far. I only got one weekend in the dorm which sucked. It had around 16 bunk beds and was quite spacious. Usually they cram it full, which would have been hellish, but there were only 6 or 7 of us, so it felt luxurious. There were large windows, frosted so you couldn't see out, but it was the best thing ever. We don't realize how much light affects our mood. Having that natural light stream in all day was like mana from heaven. The dorm had two tables with benches which meant I didn't have to eat balancing my food tray on my lap, sitting on my mat. It had a TV, but the room was large enough you could go to the other end and sort of take a break from it. I got a deck of cards that weekend, which was a welcome distraction.
5. Pods: these were similar to #2, but smaller. They had a small bench to eat at, but other than that, just enough room to pace back and forth. They did have windows that you could actually see out of. That was a treat. I would just sit and stare at the trees and the sky for hours. I would feel quite melancholy and sad, but seeing the world outside made me feel somewhat connected. The cell was small enough that it felt quite psychologically oppressive. I know how a lion feels, pacing back and forth at the zoo. It's sign of mental distress, and I couldn't stop myself from doing it. One thing I noticed is that you have to find a way to break up the monotony of the day. Pace for a bit, lie on bed, pace, sit on the bed, stare out the window, lie on the bed but looking at a different section of the wall. Sunday nights were the worst. It was difficult to fall asleep, and I always ended up waking hours before we were released, not knowing what time it was. Most weekends I could get a sense of time, but in #2 and #3, there was no way to tell the time. It really messes with your mind, not knowing if an hour has passed, or 4 hours, or 30 minutes. I was fortunate in that it only ever lasted for 52 hours, but even that was difficult to endure some weekends.
There really ought to be a judicial process for determining which prison you ought to be serving your sentence in. If you become enemy to the feds you get a life of absolute hell thanks to some guy high up placing you there you out of vendetta.
For example, for minor offences have 1-2 days of solitary confinement, and increase it meaningfully as the violence of the crime increases and for recidivists.
The benefit is that you can isolate the prisoners completely, so that they don't engage in gang activity, drugs, etc. It's also much safer for prison guards and you can get by with less. You can also pack in a lot more convicts into a small area, but also the turnover will be much quicker, so you can handle more convicts.
Solitary confinement is much much harsher, so for first-time-offenders, they will get scared straight, but they also can't get indoctrinated into more criminal activity from gang members, etc. First time offenders will get scared straight much quicker (spending only a few days or a week in solitary) vs much longer sentences.
By putting them in solitary confinement you are doing the exact opposite: not helping them but actually turning them further away from society because you are actively hurting them. Changing the prison environment to a place where criminals can actually get out of the vicious cycle they're in is the way to go. Not putting the failure to do so on them.
Apart from that I also strongly believe that solitary confinement is inhumane in itself and so are life long prison sentences. (Corporal Punishment is wrong on a completely different level) The only time that people should be locked up for life is if they are mentally ill or pose a concrete threat by the time they would be released.
My other hypothesis is that people commit crimes for only 2 reasons:
1) They don't think they will get caught. For these types of people, the punishment won't be a deterrent because they believe they will never suffer the consequences. You could literally raise the punishment level to death and it wouldn't affect these people from committing the crime because they don't believe they will get caught.
2) They don't care if they get caught (ie. they don't think or care about the consequences of their actions). This can be split into 2 subgroups: a) They simply don't care about the consequences (ex. acts of passion or they are ignorant to the consequences). b) They think the consequences are "worth" it.
Punishment really only will affect group 2B. The other two groups (1 and 2a) won't be deterred no matter what. So the question really is, how do we optimize deterring group 2B? Solitary confinement, to me, is a more cost-efficient way of increasing the scale exponentially while still not being drastic. Some might say that 90 days in solitary confinement is worse than a few years in jail. If that's true, then it's really cost efficient, and would serve as a cheap, quick deterrent and might prevent recidivism.
Cognitive behavioural therapy and changing habits beats solitary, any day.
For anyone who likes parents theory and dislikes mine, I'd be very interested in knowing why.
(I don't really think this theory is correct - but it does seem plausible)
Is it less ethical to cane someone for theft than it is to fine them, thus depriving them of money they probably can't afford to lose, or incarcerating them, thus stopping them from being productive members of society and allowing them to hang out with bad influences?
I don't like the idea, because it's violent and we can't claim the upper moral hand. The beauty of solitary confinement is that it's completely non-violent but it's very harsh mentally. You can make the case that it's mental torture but it's just an edge case of regular prisons, where the number of prisoners N = 1, and the prison is the size of a cell.
For that matter why is violence as punishment morally worse than involuntary confinement as punishment. If Joe does either to you we all agree it's morally wrong, but for some reason we consider justice system sanctioned confinement fine, but not violence. Why?
(I'm assuming you understand violence to include "strapped to a chair and waterboarded" and "fed drugs that trigger pain receptors" - I'm not sure everyone considers the word violence to include those things)
Edit: I know it's against guidelines here to say this - but can we consider not downvoting pfarnsworth to hell - whatever you think of his opinions he is providing good discussion.
Drugs are already used for the death penalty. It's not that far off.
it is violent. Violence does not have to be a stimulus that you present to the subject (hitting, etc...). It can be a collection of stimuli that you withhold from the subject as in this case.
Someone even coined a term for it: structural violence.[1]
violence (n)
a : the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy
b : an instance of violent treatment or procedure
Just because someone made up his own redefinition doesn't mean much. Edit: In fact, making up a definition of "violence" that is explicitly not "violence" not only doesn't mean much, it's Orwellian and indicative of subterfuge.
And you claim words mean things? Who is being Orwellian here? The only difference between your argument and literally 1984 is you've introduced a new ministry of non-violence, the organization that enacts non-violence on citizens by physically forcing them into torture chambers.
Is grabbing someone in an alley and kidnapping them violent? No?
I agree words do mean things. Although, I would say putting someone in solitary confinement is an enactment of force. If that force destroys or damages their sanity would it meet the first definition?
Also let's not forget about the connotation to words. If someone put someone in solitary confinement and basically left them for years on end. May I ask is that cruel? I would say it is cruel.
The definition of cruelty is generally to inflict pain or suffering. So how different is cruelty from violence?
I can go further. Inflict also means to impose. Impose can also mean to force. One can see that these words are related.
So now I shall state what I feel is the most important question people should ask. What power do "you" think the state should have? I would clearly do not want the state to have the power to be cruel. What about the power to enact violence? I would say no again. (Power as in legal authority).
However, one might ask what about war or defending the people with a potentially violent means? Just think about that? I can guess you would probably not want your government to be violent just because it can. However, I also guess that if your country is under attack you would not feel the government is acting wrongly or illegitimately for defending you and the rest of it's citizens. Where do you draw the line though?
Lastly, I say it is wise to ensure a government does not have power that is either immoral or violates the rights of it's citizens.
--edit--
I would agree that from a quick overview of that structural violence page. That seems a bit of a stretch for the word violence.
Many people believe solitary confinement does as much harm or more than physical violence.
By coining terms such as structural violence, we can attempt to disable the tactic of those who support supposedly "non violent" or "lawful" actions that are nonetheless immoral.
How is YouTube Kids a "basic need"?
If you restricted your children access to food, or water, I'd certainly say you were exerting violence on them.
Having the ability to move around of your free will taken away is already pretty harsh and people commit suicide readily when faced with this possibility (which is the reason they take away your shoelaces and belt even for the shortest spans of confinement where I live), solitary confinement is several degrees above that and could very well permanently affect the psychological state of the victim (word used with great care) of such treatment.
Obviously any kind of imprisonment has risks as you note but your remedy seems much worse than the original problem.
Can we actually change adult behaviour positively through our penal systems?
Also, sometimes 1-2 days completely alone sounds pretty good.
I think getting rid of this is one of the biggest benefits of these alternative schemes. It is otherwise phrased as "the deterrent aspect of being put in a situation where you (believe?) you are likely to get raped and otherwise abused". It's cruel, unethical, and has no place in modern society.
Thereby showing that it's not an effective deterrent?