November 25, 2019

How can I improve my arguments without making it boring?

As an American citizen, I find it important to understand and recognize the realities in the country, even if they are not always good. The reality is that prisons and jails are ran all across the country treat their inmates as less than and go to extreme lengths to dehumanize them which is where the discussion of solitary confinement comes in. There is consistent examples of that isolation has proven to do more harm than good to the people in jails and outside across the country. The way inmates are treated while in prison is horrendous but the experience inside of solitary confinement is even worse for most if not all of those who experience it. The American government needs to make major changes to their isolation systems in order to avoid the drastic tolls solitary confinement takes on an inmate.

If you were to walk into a prison, you may not have a full understanding of the different places within the jail. There are different sections to jail but the two most known is the general population and solitary confinement. General population is most likely the aspect of prison you would recognize. Cells with bunk beds, a common area with tables, the inmates have the opportunities to go outdoors and see their families for visitations. In solitary confinement, “The cells are tiny, six to eight feet wide and ten to twelve long. Instead of a bunk and a stool, as in the movies, there are immovable concrete slabs; instead of a lattice of bars, steel plated doors”(Heffernan). The process of being placed into solitary confinement isn’t as complicated as one may believe it is. When you first enter a prison you go through the processing system in which it is determined if you should be on suicide watch. If you are said to be suicidal, you will most likely be placed in isolation and that is just one example of the people they place in isolation, Inmates can be placed in solitary confinement for fighting, talking back to the guards and even just because of overcrowding in the general population of the jail. ““Many are put in such quarters during pre-trial investigations. Others are housed there because regular cells are full. Kids, minorities or those who are gay or transgender may be placed in solitary confinement for protection from other inmates, even if they prefer to be in a traditional cell. Some are sent there for minor prison infractions, such as swearing or ignoring orders. The mentally ill are often locked in isolation” (Mcmanus). The risk of inmates mental health declining soars when they are placed into solitary confinement given the fact that they are completely separated from society, human interaction and just comfort in general.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was one that added to my interest on the topic of solitary and prison as a whole. In short, the experiment followed college students, half pretending to be inmates and half pretending to be guards. The experiment ended unexpectedly due to the “guards” power hungry attitudes and the declining mental health of the participants posing as inmates. The experiment was groundbreaking in the arguments against the prison systems as, “it became a legendary landmark study of the propensity for dehumanization involved in operating a system where people have authority for the custody and control of others” (Bornus) as well as the conditions that “became so inhumane that two prisoners had emotional breakdowns and were released from the experiment, while others went on hunger strikes or plotted escapes.”(Bornus). The participants posing as inmates suffered mental breakdowns as well as uncharacterized outbursts that they would have never exhibited before which was triggered by the contained environment they were in and the way they were treated much like animals with no human needs. This is just one experiment that exemplifies the danger of being in jail and in solitary due to the power given to the guards and the lack of humanity shown to the inmates.

Mental health is never taken as seriously as it should be in any location, let alone in the prison systems here in America. There are more mentally ill people in prison then there are in mental health facilities. When inmates stay in solitary confinement for long periods of time, it has been proven to exacerbate and worsen mental health problems and/or trigger mental illness. Opposers may say that confinement aids prisoners and helps to build character, that the inmate deserved to be arrested and be placed in jail. Bouncing off of that, multiple research studies have been done to debunk this idea. “Solitary confinement used to mean a short stay to punish serious rule violations. But prisons and jails now lock away inmates for months, even years, for small infractions—and sometimes for no infraction at all”(Wood). Many inmates released from isolation struggle immensely with reconnecting and stepping back into normal behaviors which is a huge representation of how the system is flawed and needs to be changed. No one deserves to be put into a place where they are being treated as an animal and placed in inhumane conditions. Prison was originally developed as a place for rehabilitation, not punishment and that is exactly what solitary has come to.

There is much you can do in order to change the way the American prison system works. The one that will be most effective and show the most signs of positive change would be the removal of solitary confinement as a whole. We need to be more aware of the things happening around us and the people who are being affected by the unjust way they are treated. As mentioned before, the American Prison system is beyond an unjust system for the American people and the way they are treated leads to mental health problems; sometimes beyond repair. Solitary confinement needs to be removed from state, county and federal prisons in order to regain the original intent of arresting and placing inmates in jail. A success story for prison rehabilitation would be in Sweden, there jails are centered around rehabilitation instead of punishment and they lead an exemplary example of what that looks like. In Sweden, their drastic approach to eliminating solitary and punishment to inmates have shown major declines in the amount of arrests made since 2002. The main idea of a Swedish prison is rehabilitation of the prisoners. The rehabilitation goal is met through giving the inmates library access, courses in high school and college level classes, comfortable environments, and given the ability to work. These steps that Sweden has taken have shown major growth in their prison systems and showed exemplary action in taking into account the mental health and the future of the inmates.

Taking into account the major tolls that solitary and prison as a whole take on an inmate in America, it is made extremely clear that the American government needs to change their isolation systems in order to avoid the drastic tolls solitary confinement takes on an inmate. The differences between solitary and isolation are drastic as well as the effects of each on an inmate should be enough to change the course of the way the system works for inmates in order to better them and create more of a positive environment and outcome for the inmates after their release.