In theory, the United States Criminal Justice System ensures lawbreakers get punishment proportional to the crime they have commited. However, although the U.S. condemns other countries such as China or Russia for utilizing torture, our usage of Solitary Confinement is not different. The effects of such isolation are serious, and are essentially torture that just goes by a different name. This violation of human rights does not benefit society, and worst of all, this situation is being covered up and swept under the rug.
According to the TED talk, “What Happens To People In Solitary Confinement,” in the ADX, a federal prison in Colorado, prisoners faced symptoms of lonliness, including lack of usage of vocal cords, dissociation, insanity, and attempted suicide. When they do get out of prison, the inhabitants are likely to be cut off from the world, as people are defined by their connections and relationships to others.
Prison’s purpose for the most part is to correct people and to make them suitable for society again. However, damaging them beyond repair is not going to help. No matter what heinous crime one has committed, the correct reaction should not to hurt them more and make that criminal into a more dangerous one, but should be to rehabilitate and restore them. However, this will only occur in a Utopian story, and will never happen anytime soon in reality if the Justice System stays this way.
Although such brutal torture is being tolerated by the U.S. government, they refuse criticism by keeping all these practices in secrecy. Ironically, our country calls out other countries’ use of this, but shields our own people from these truths. This is because we are too lazy to find another better, more humane method.
Solitary Confinement has no place in our Criminal Justice System, as it does not help prisoners, and is a lazy, inhumane way of torturing people.