https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/2...
Just one of the many cases of institutionalised torture.
And it is the states, the prisons responsibility to find a humane way to incarcerate people, if you fail so miserably at it, it just shows how morally bankrupt your country is.
That's 30% up when compared to those prisoners who might be fearing that their cell might kill them. Solitary is more stressful than that environment, objectively.
[0] https://massivesci.com/notes/cardiovascular-health-compariso...
That entirely depends on the person. Go talk to a corrections officer. Some folks go mad in solitary, others find relief from the daily threat of physical violence and do OK.
Some may well find solitary helpful. However, if the vast majority of data finds that it is harmful, physically and mentally, then we should not use those outliers to gauge whether or not something is effective.
I don't doubt that living in a small area has measurable effect on the mental and cardiovascular health of many inmates. But what is the alternative? Let those inmates live in open population? Try for a moment to imagine being a physically weak inmate in a prison where some psychopath has decided you're a snitch. Can you imagine the fear that induces? And then when the violence happens, the weak inmate will be lucky to come out alive.
Seriously, that's a real question. What's the alternative for murderous, raping inmates who pose an active thread to inmates and wardens? Maximum security prisons have many of them. Where do they go with no solitary?
Yes, but that's irrelevant to the conversation at hand. That solitary is torture and hurts people far more than it helps them. That that's what the science says.
As I've said, anecdotes are irrelevant. Data is.
> But what is the alternative? Let those inmates live in open population?
> ...
> Maximum security prisons have many of them. Where do they go with no solitary?
Maximum security prisons don't just have the two extremes of solitary and open population. Normal prisons usually have more than gen pop and solitary.
If rehabilitation is the goal, and not just punishment, then prisons tend to be less violent overall. These statistical outliers who go around attacking everyone also reduce in frequency.
I'm 100% for significant prison reform. We have far, far too many nonviolent offenders, or offenders who made a one-time really poor decision in a bar fight or something similar, housed together in prison with psychopaths, gang members, and ultra-violent inmates. But until the day comes when only habitually violent prisoners are housed together in prison, facilities for solitary confinement are needed, not only for violent prisoners, but for people in protective custody.
Whatever the case may be, there is also the matter of them being a bad influence on each other.
It decidedly does not support the conclusion. The percent of the population studies were those who had filed a lawsuit about solitary confinement. This is the definition of a biased sample.
This point is completely proven to be false by the fact that people are having their QOL indicators trashed.
2) Your basis for "This point is completely proven to be false by the fact that people are having their QOL indicators trashed" is what? The statistically-biased study you posted?
Are you not in this thread? [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176652
> 2) Your basis for "This point is completely proven to be false by the fact that people are having their QOL indicators trashed" is what? The statistically-biased study you posted?
You didn't like that study? And thus refuse to have any other conversation? Fine. Lets have some more.
[0] https://www.themarshallproject.org/documents/3234404-Aiming-... - The government knows it is harmful, and is tracking and pushing for reduction of its use.
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... - It increases mortality after release. (Study where N=229,297).
[2] https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us1012ForUpl... - It stunts the growth of juveniles and leads to a variety of mental health problems.
[3] http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/appsych/opus/issues/2015/spring/co... - Here's an earlier study that also covers the hyptension systems already mentioned.
[4] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cbm.627 - In juveniles, it increases recidivism, and causes mental and physical health problems.
QoL indicators from all studies are showing problems. Solitary Confinement is above the threshold where it can be safely used against any one person.
Where are you getting this stuff? I never said anything about refusing to have any other conversation. And you responded to the wrong comment above. You quoted another commenter and responded to it in a reply to me. That's not how threaded forums work.
Are you confusing me with other HNer again here?
Nope.
> You quoted another commenter and responded to it in a reply to me. That's not how threaded forums work.
That's exactly how thread topics work. That's the context of the conversation.
And it does. Methods like solitary do classify as torture under international laws.
The not approved, but still happens, "code red"s that get employed by both staff and inmates, are very clearly torturous.
Slave labor, could also classify as torture. Especially when those meager wages are decimated by the basic costs of things. Such as the per-minute charges to read free ebooks that has been rolling out, or the ridiculous charges to connect by phone or email to anyone not living in the same hell that you are - something that has been shown to help the mental state of the incarcerated.