Solitary Confinement Is Torture

Justine Boniface LEGALTST 185AC Unit Two Reflection March 7

In 2013, the UN rapporteur on torture Juan Mndez, appointed by resolution 1985/33 of the UN Commission on Human Rights, published two reports (Report of the special rapporteur on torture on other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment Feb. 1, 2013 and Review of the standard minimum rules for the treatments of prisoners August 9, 2013) in which he argues that solitary confinement should be banned in most cases and warns against the massive abuse of Security Housing Units (SHU) in the American carceral system. In the second report, Mendez assesses that Prison regimes of solitary confinement often cause mental and physical suffering or humiliation that amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. If used intentionally for purposes such as punishment, intimidation, coercion or obtaining information or a confession, or for any reason based on discrimination, and if the resulting pain or suffering are severe, solitary confinement even amounts to torture (Report A/68/295, p. 16/23). Already denounced by Charles Dickens during his trip to North America in 1842, solitary confinement is thus considered equivalent to torture by the highest authority in the matter.

What is SHU?
SHU was developed in the 1980s, following the rise of violence in some state prisons during the 1970s, as a way to control SHU sketch Thomas Silberstein Ex-inmate held 30 years in solitary confinement the worst of the worst prisoners and to respond to overcrowding. This special method of punishment, consisting in isolating a prisoner from any human contact and lock him up 23/24 hours a day, has proliferated during the last two decades, especially in California. As Professor Simon recalled in his lecture of February 20, there is no legal limit as to how long an inmate can be held in solitary confinement; this lack of regulation is actually generalized to the entire system of From Sept. 29, 1978 through September 30, 1979, the Taiwanese artist Teching Hsieh locked himself in a cage to experience solitary confinement. isolation. Very few photos of SHU cell remain unclear, as enlightens are the published and the actual dimensions of a incapacity of Charles Samuels, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, to answer the question of Senator Franken on the average size of a cell in solitary (cf. article of the Hunffington Post of Feb. 25, 2014).

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The Negative Effects of Solitary Confinement and its AntiRehabilitative Logic

Solitary confinement not only illustrates legal loopholes but also presents negative effects on the physical and mental health of the incarcerated inmate, as highlighted Dr. Terry Kupers from the American Psychiatrist Association, in a speech at Chicago on November 9, 2009. The specialist argues that solitary confinement, through sleep and sensory deprivation as well as the feelings of anger and despair it provokes in the prisoner often leads to mental breakdown and to suicide in 50% of the case. A vicious circle between mental illness and solitary confinement is rapidly set, the mental fragility of an inmate justifying his isolation, and his isolation worsening his mental fragility. Dr. Kupers also points out that a prisoner cannot see a practitioner and begin a therapy out of a cage made of steel. SHU is for him a punitive segregation and fulfills an anti-rehabilitative logic. Indeed, a 2012 report of the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has proved that SHU worsened recidivism, as shows the above graph.

Moreover, as Prof. Simon wrote in his blog (governingthroughcrime.blogspot.com) on July 8, 2013, most SHU prisoners are there not for any crimes committed on the outside, or disciplinary violations on the inside, but because prison officials have determined that they are an "associate" of one of the racist prison gangs that dominate the social order of California prisons.

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Solitary confinement, therefore, not only hinders rehabilitation but does not even fulfill security goals. Indeed, during the hunger strike that took place at Pelican Bay last summer, Jeffrey Beard, the head of the CDCR, declared in an article published by the L.A. Times on August 6, 2013 that many of those participating in the hunger strike are under extreme pressure to do so from violent prison gangs - prisoners gangs supposedly held in solitary confinement. Then what is the actual justification of SHU, if it is not to prevent gang leaders to terrorize other inmate as well as prison staff?

The answer may be that, precisely, there is no concrete justification to solitary confinement. Threatening the physical and mental health of the isolated inmate, SHU is also, as recalls Juan Mndez, a degrading treatment that directly damages the prisoners inherent dignity. In his book In the Belly of the Beast, Letters from Prison (1981), Jack Henry Abbott, former inmate held much time in solitary confinement, declares: If I were an animal housed in a zoo in quarters of these dimensions, the Humane Society would have the zookeeper arrested for cruelty. It is illegal to house an animal in such confines (p. 46). And yet, incarceration implies the loss of some civil rights, not of rights in general; the right to dignity, in particular, has been declared fundamental by the US Supreme Court in 1958 (case Trop vs. Dulles) when Chief Justice Warren claimed that the basic concept underlying the 8th amendment is nothing less than the dignity of man. More recently, in Brown v. Plata (2011), the Court recalled that prisoners retain the essence of human dignity inherent in all persons.

Therefore, solitary confinement is not only an infringement of the prisoners rights but an infringement of Human Rights in general. Through SHU, it is not only the incarcerated inmate that is harmed and humiliated, but society as the whole. Accepting solitary confinement within our prisons is approving of a legal and organized form of torture and denying to certain men the right to health care, to rehabilitation and to dignity. As Jack Abbott wrote in his book: You sit in solitary confinement stewing in nothingness. Not merely your own nothingness but the nothingness of society, others, the world (p. 44).

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