Sunny Youth Journal

Teenagers, elders, and siblings alike, everybody is their own person. They have their own memories and experiences, as well as relationships with others. An ongoing idea throughout “The Moustache” by Robert Cormier is establishing an identity. The main character Mike learns by the end of the story that the other in his life are their own people too, and that he should savor his time with them.

Mike is an average seventeen year old boy who, as he approaches adulthood, wants to feel like an individual and to be seem as one. For example, his older sister has a boyfriend named Harry. Mike really likes him because he treats him as a separate person instead of in the context of his sister. Also as the title suggests, he wears a mustache. Although everyone including him knows that it does not suit him, he keeps it anyway because it sets him apart from others his age and makes him feel more grown up. However, he does not necessarily think of others in the same way. But he learns so through his encounter with his grandmother. She is old, weak, and sometimes delusional. He he visits her in a nursery, she mistake him for her husband, who Mike was named after. Since he died young, she voices everything she wanted to say to him, and wishes that she were more honest. Listening to her experiences, Mike learns that his grandmother had been young once too, and also had a real life. He always thought of her as just his grandmother, but now he sees her as an individual with her own past.

In addition to seeing the identities of others, Mike also realizes how fast life comes and goes. There were many things his grandmother wanted to say to her husband, but he was taken too soon. When he gets home, he immediately shaves off his mustache. He thinks of asking his parents, “there’s nothing to forgive between you, is there?”(Cormier 7). By growing out his mustache, Mike wants to become a mature adult. But his meeting with his grandmother convinced him otherwise. He now knows to just slow down and take in life.

To conclude, Mike learns two important life lessons in the story. His grandmother teaches him both about acknowledging the other people in his life and also appreciating them. The mustache that previously demonstrated his maturity is gone, as he learns to enjoy his time with his family.

The case of whether or not criminals should be in solitary confinement has been on for years. It was one not allowed, but yet it came back. Federal Government’s most secure prison that is known as ADX, and information has been locked away from the rest of the community. This secrecy mostly affects the family members of the prisoners in this prison. However, this is not about ADX and their secrets. We don’t know for sure what is going on in that prison, other than the fact that prisoners are held in that tiny room for 23 hours and let out for one hour in yet again a caged area outside. They are basically locked in like animals.

Now, solitary confinement is a way of torture. There are many disagreements and agreements on how prisoners should be disciplined for their past actions. Let’s take a deep example of someone getting murdered. The murderer is sent to a prison and sentenced to solitary confinement for life. There are mixed feelings on whether solitary confinement is the right punishment. Personally, solitary confinement should not be practiced. As stated, many times in the talk, this way of torture leads to serious effects on mental health. It alters their human mind, leads them to lose the ability to have a social life, and possibly cause them to start losing their minds. For sentences of solitary confinement that are not life sentences, this way of torture is extremely bad for the prisoner. Prison is a place for punishment, but it is also the place where prisoners realize their mistake and become better. It may not be totally true, but for some people, prison has helped them. By sentencing someone to solitary confinement, it could easily strap away their human identity.

Now for some places that agree with solitary confinement, this would probably be because of religion in that certain area. Maybe solitary confinement would let them think and repent for their mistakes, but after a while, people in solitary confinement will not be able to stand being locked up and will act up maybe twice as bad as they were before because of the damage being done to their mental health. Solitary confinement should not be used anywhere because of the terrible effects it has. Afterall, being locked up in solitary confinement is like being an animal in a cage. Prisoners may have done bad things that hopefully they will learn and regret, but they are still humans even though the things they did were terrible. I am not saying what way we should treat prisoners, but solitary confinement is definitely not the way for anyone because it tortures someone to the point of completely damaging one’s mental health.

Over the past few months, the entire world has been on lockdown mode due to the global pandemic, Covid-19. Many people have been suffering due to this new change, but there are other people who have been suffering a lockdown for longer than anyone can imagine. Solitary confinement is a reality that many people face all over the world in prisons. Personally, quarantine has not been unmanageable, but I simply cannot bear the thought of being locked up in a seven by ten feet concrete cell. Solitary confinement is inhumane because it causes mental illness and goes against a human being’s rights.

Mental illness is something that is very prominent in the world and there is an entire month dedicated to spreading awareness about it. Many different factors can go into creating or aiding the cause of mental illness. The environment of only concrete and steel doors can and will cause a person to go insane and develop different mental illnesses such as : depression, anxiety, and personality disorders. Currently, there are approximately 2.2 million inmates in the United States. 356,000 of those inmates are mentally ill, and approximately 100,00 inmates are in solitary confinement.

On top of causing and creating mental illnesses, solitary confinement is a “violation of the prohibition against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment found in international human rights law.” Even the worst of criminals are still human, therefore are obligated to basic human rights such as the right to social security, freedom of expressions, and freedom of thought. Solitary confinement is seen as torture and many people are protesting to have it removed. “For many prisoners, solitary confinement is a sentence worse than death.” This shows how torturous solitary confinement really was.

Although solitary confinement is not illegal, it violates almost every right that a human has. Even the worst of the worst criminals and inmates have basic human rights. “To first and foremost say it’s been a long time coming for this crucial and horrible thing called ‘SEGREGATION’…There’s men that’s been on lock-up for 20 or 30 years and without write-ups.” Torture is inhumane, not to mention illegal, yet the government does it everyday. The U.S. government and country as a whole may have come a long way since racial segregation in the 1960’s and back. However, if solitary confinement continues to exist in the U.S., we will be taking leaps backwards.

Sources :
https://www.amnestyusa.org/the-shocking-abuse-of-solitary-confinement-in-u-s-prisons/#:~:text=While%20there%20may%20be%20instances,in%20international%20human%20rights%20law.

https://www.youthforhumanrights.org/what-are-human-rights/universal-declaration-of-human-rights/articles-16-30.html

https://law.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/solitaryconfinementreport.pdf

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.

Torture is easily one of the most immoral and inhumane ways to punish someone. Although many forms of torture are banned under international law, there is still one form many individuals underestimate, due to the lack of physical pain being done on the people being tortured. That method is solitary confinement, and it is one of the worst methods of torturing someone. It damages an individual’s mental health and can make them consider or try suicide, many of them succeeding. However, can the use of solitary confinement be justified?

The answer is no. Long-term solitary confinement should never be used on someone, and no one deserves it either. Solitary confinement is very harmful to one’s mental health, and many people believe that it is inhumane due to the mental instability it causes. Before, there was a belief that solitary confinement would force self-reflection or remorse. Instead, many prisoners went insane, and that shows solitary confinement serves no long-term positive purpose. It does not do anything positive for the prisoners, and only makes them worse.

However, many individuals still think that solitary confinement is justifiable if the person it is being used on committed devastating crimes. However, they are false. Solitary confinement only damages one’s mental health, and does not have any benefit to the ones that it is being enforced on. Death penalty is a less inhumane punishment for a prisoner with devastating crimes, since it causes less mental pain on them. However, that does not mean that death penalty should be used either.

(unfinished)

Oh, a prisoner‘s punishment, which will it be?

Serving your time, being confined or crossing your line?

Serving your time, a common one indeed,

Go to prison for some years, and get too freedom for some cheers

Being confined, in a small space to be,

Nobody to talk to, nowhere to go,

You could only stare, dream and think about what will happen soon

But until then, just hope for some tune

Crossing you line, you will not feel anything,

You simply disappear as a killer or a thief

Now which is more cruel, time, confine, or die?

Time is regular, a standard punishment

Confine is torture, insanity it is

Dying is well…. not too swell

Confinement is the worst of course!

Nothing to do, only dreaming and thinking

Nobody to talk to, nobody to see

Your identity fades away, you don’t know who you are,

You Make friends with yourself, and other nasty critters

So confinement… insanity torturing you mentally

So confinement… is seeping someone’s life force

So confinement… is inhuman

So confinement… do you agree with it?

So it started with Mike’s mustache. So, nobody liked his mustache. Including his girlfriend, his mom, his dad, and his sister. His girlfriend didn’t like it because when he went to the movies, the person at the front of the place charged him full price because he had a mustache. Also, at home, his sister and his mother didn’t like his mustache either. And when he went to the nursing home to visit his grandmother, he was relived that his grandmother recognized him as Mike. But, then she started to talk to Mike, and slowly he realized, that she didn’t recognize him as the 17 year old mike. She recognized him as the grandfather Mike. Her husband. And she said she was asking forgiveness about things. After she talked with him, he went home, used a razor his sister gave him for Christmas, and shaved off his mustache.

People in solitary confinement, or ADX, are known to be a place where “bad” people are housed.”Bad” people meaning that they had countless murders, are terrorists, and more. Outside of the prison may look nice and sweet and look like a nice suburban middle school with a nice lobby, but what’s happening inside the prison, is much, much worse than what you see on the outside.

Inside the prison, it is dirty and isn’t maintained properly from the inmates. The inmates have little bathrooms and have dirty attitudes. There are two examples of dirty attitudes in the prison, the first one is rubbing feces on their faces. The second example is attempting suicide and cutting themselves. Both of these examples are both from the effect of being trapped in such a miserable environment causing them depression. While these actions are being done, police don’t seem to care about them. This could lead to many deaths each year in jail and will have a negative effect on hummanity.

Self isolation could be worse than any other punishment for prisoners. Of course, physical punishments such as death penalty could be bad, but psychological torture is much worse. Solitary confinement is widely used in prisons worldwide, usually violating human rights. Boredom is not the only effect of isolation. Solitary confinement for long periods of time can mentally harm the prisoner, causing them to take drastic measures. Prisons that use this immoral and unethical way of punishment push away the media, and silence those with information. Solitary confinement can greatly harm a person mentally and physically, and such a practice should not be legal.

Confinement lengths can range from around a day, to even months. Those sentenced to isolation would be put all alone in a tiny cell and are hardly every let out. In the US alone, hundreds of thousands of prisoners have been sentenced to self isolation for very long periods of time, and the numbers still rise. Usually, solitary confinement is used for the suicidal, dangerous, or those who have other related mental illnesses. For those suffering from mental illness or other related sickness, self isolation should be the very last choice. Self isolation could actually drive the prisoner insane, causing them to do even more dangerous things. Solitary confinement last a long time, and can cause insanity in many different ways.

Many prisoners who have experienced self isolation have described their horrible experiences. Being isolated for long periods of time can cause a person to question themselves. Without any connection to the outside world, many prisoners find themselves taking desperate measures. Some would yell as loud as they could to try and communicate with other prisoners. Others resorted to harmful methods such as self harming and suicide, and many were successful. Some prisoners who have experienced solitary confinement could not even describe the experience into words, so they use forms of art instead. Solitary confinement has permanently affected prisoners in some of the worst ways possible.

Some might argue that the worst and most terrible criminals deserve such physiological torture. This is wrong, as solitary confinement should never be the correct choice. It is the human right of the prisoner to have have access to the outside world. If criminals should have the right to hire a lawyer or attorney, why should prisoners be deprived of their basic human right of social communication. If it comes to a certain point, there are other methods of punishments such as the death penalty. This goes to show that solitary confinement is not the right method for helping or punishing prisoners.

To make the situation even worse, little is known about solitary confinement use in prisons. Prisons usually block out the media, refusing interviews and journalists. Mail is even prohibited or tampered with. On the rare occasion of a family member being allowed to visit, they will be tightly monitored, in case any information is leaked. If a family member somehow got important information, the would be sworn to secrecy, as a result of the government. Prisons block out the media, giving them full control over prisoners, leaving them helpless.

Solitary confinement can substantially harm a human being mentally and physically, and such a practice should never be allowed. Isolation can cause prisoners to take desperate measures, causing them to self harm, and drives others to suicide. Prisons block out the media, a silence those with an opinion. No matter how big of a crime, prisoners should never be sentenced to such inhumane practices.

The problem of torture and stopping it is one that has concerned people of all backgrounds, who belive solitary confinement is torture and are fighting for these actions to stop.

To encapsulate, I belive that criminals should get basic human rights. For example, they could be allowed to step outside, see the scenery and run around in a field for exercise, not run around in a large cage! These torture actions have a horrendous effect on the prisoners, who not even them deserve such a treatment, and will only lead to human corruption.