Imagine being locked up in a room the size of a bathroom, alone with nothing to do. The room is made up of thick cement walls with no windows, so communication is almost impossible. For 23 hours each day, there will be nothing to do, and this process continues for many days, months, and possibly years or even decades. This is solitary confinement torture. In the Ted Talk What Happens to People in Solitary Confinement spoken by Laura Rovner, the speaker informs humans on the true horrors of solitary confinement inside the ADX prison. This torture needs to be banned because it causes severe health problems, and makes people go insane.
Humans are social creatures. From the beginning of mankind until now, humans were always organized in groups, which allowed communication and socializing. Solitary confinement completely isolates one from this group, the group of humans. Social media is one of the key gadgets for communication, and it is taken away. The speaker explained how people locked in adjacent cells would attempt to talk by screaming through shower drains, and still see little to no success. Their constant screaming would slowly take away their ability to talk, which is another torture, and they will eventually become mute. Additionally, the enraged individuals even try band their own heads on the walls for entertainment, only to cause brain damage, which is obviously not helpful. All of the ways people in solitary confinement try to entertain themselves or communicate only lead to more torture and will cause insanity. Solitary confinement needs to be banned.
A ways of treatment capable of inducing insanity is not something one should agree to. It is one of the cruelest punishments to ever exist. The speaker stated that solitary confinement causes one to forget self-existence and avoid other humans. Forgetting self-existence causes people to perform “life-checks” on themselves to see if they are alive. These “life-checks” include harming oneself, and possible even trying to suicide, which adds more onto the list of health problems. Avoiding humans is an even more serious problem. As previously stated, humans are social creatures, and solitary confinement takes away the ability to socialize. Instead of being forced into not socializing, the poor individuals are now voluntarily performing the action defying the meaning of humans. Solitary confinement is completely mind-washing people and destroying brains. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, everyone is forced to isolate themselves in their own homes, and contact with other humans is dangerous. In this scenario, COVID-19 represents the prison. Thankfully, the world has provided mankind with social media, a form of reliable communication with friends and family. Medical workers during this pandemic have a different story. Many of them are forced to live away from their family and isolate themselves in case they contract COVID-19 from working with sick patients. All over social media, there are frightening videos of crying medical workers begging for COVID-19 to go away, similarly to prisoners begging to leave the prison. This pandemic has also engaged human avoidance, which is another terrible cause of social confinement. Even though the confinement of COVID-19 is nothing near that of real solitary confinement, people are still going insane, trying to do anything to entertain themselves. Solitary confinement is a serious problem and has to be stopped.
Some may say that people who commit such terrible crimes deserve to be tortured in solitary confinement, but this perspective is near-sighted. To clear up the understanding, many of these same people also agree to stop the death sentence. To start off, torture is much worse than a death sentence. The death sentence is quick and fast, but torture is slow. Would one rather die instantly without pain, or endure through months of merciless insanity? The decision is obvious. Additionally, even if the criminal survives solitary confinement, their brain will be seriously affected because a crime so terrible probably will result in decades of confinement. Instead of quickly killing without pain, humanity has decided to torture one’s brain with such an extent that makes people suicide.
In conclusion, solitary confinement, or should it be called pure cruelty, needs to be banned. Solitary confinement causes insanity and extreme health damage. By banning this torture, humanity can rid the suffering of millions of individuals, their hopeless friends, and family. Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, once said “The healthy man does not torture others – generally, it is the tortured who turn into tortures.” Solitary confinement is something evil that poisons the mind.