Solitary Confinement

My husband is pretty typical for a man. He likes to watch crap that I would rather stab myself than sit through, but I've learned that, sometimes, it's important to give things a chance. I'm lucky because he doesn't watch sports, which I can't stand, but his interest in documentaries can often open up my brain. The other night is a good example.

Adam picked a documentary on Colorado State Penitentiary, which is a facility that houses about eight hundred inmates and every single one of them is in long-tern solitary confinement. Every. Single. One.

The idea was to show the way the program was run and the Warden and other prison officials talked about the effectiveness, but they also interviewed these inmates and the impact of being without physical contact for years at a time. Yes, I said years.

There was some research they presented that talked about loneliness, isolation, and how that impacted impulse control; nearly instantaneously. It was astounding. Despite the fact that these men were proven to be harmful to the general population, I was concerned for them. The United States is, apparently, the only country in the world that still utilizes this sort of long-tern solution to behavior problems. There is a team of researchers that are studying the impact so that, maybe, things will change – if the evidence supports it.

I was watching this documentary sort of horrified. Men would be moved in to the facility for one reason and they would be there for years. (I can't stop thinking about this.) The warden talked about a Quality of Life program where the inmates are able to earn certain privileges, like pen and paper, or a phone call, eventually bigger things like a TV or pictures through good behavior.

It sounded reasonable until I realized that the majority of the men interviewed and discussed in the documentary never got above level three out of six in this program. There was a guy who'd been incident-free for TWO YEARS and still wasn't above level three. What?! What kind of reward system is that? What are their standards? Who decides that two years of good behavior isn't good enough for art supplies?

How is this even going on? I don't need years of research to tell me that months, a year, without physical contact will break the spirit, and mind, of a person. Well, and let's not overlook the reality that most of these men have an emotional problem of some kind before they are even incarcerated. Prisons are filled with different mental disorders, it's part of why the men (and women) are there in the first place. Bad behavior isn't created in a vacuum and we know that, now, don't we?

Anyway, if you get the time or the inclination, check the documentary out. We streamed it free on Netflix.