IS THERE A CREDIBLE CASE FOR PENAL SOLITARY CONFINEMENT?

Freedom can be precarious but it allows choices

It would seem that humans have a penchant for inflicting inhumane 'punishment' on their fellow humans. Indeed, a lot of the information we get from what we have received as the history of human societies speaks forcefully and coldly of humans having an inhumane desire to inflict the most merciless of pain on others; something which, is seems, is confined only to us humans. Not satisfied with 'simply' killing someone, history tells us of people being drawn and stretched until their limbs are dislocated, then they are killed, quartered, and impaled on spikes. They are skinned alive or have organs ripped out of their bellies and left to die slowly. Eyes are gouged out and tongues removed.

Such is the history and continuation of our specie, that there has been and are still among us those who feel the need to not be satisfied with the condemned person having to or being able to die only once, but that their deaths should be made as terrible as humanly possible.  This might be part of the philosophy behind the American Criminal Justice system passing sentences of upto and more than a hundred years on some convicted persons, thereby laying claim to their souls even long after they have departed this worldly domain.  It might also be what causes some criminals and governments to also punish the families of the convicted person

And so it would appear that, sadism is as much a part of the human psyche as other baser emotions pertaining to 'crime and punishment.'

The trigger for me writing this post, is an article I saw in todays The Guardian newspaper, in which several people gave their poignant account of their terrible time in confinement in penal institution. What I found most poignant is how some of these people were initially confined for comparatively short - compared to how much time they eventually spent in confinement - period of time, but which was repeatedly extended and lasted for many years.  None of these people have committed crimes on the atrocious scale perpetrated by Anders Breivik, but their confinement mercilessly tested and damaged their sensibilities and their psychological and mental health.

I was reminded about the United Nations declaration on Human Rights. What is it that would lead societies which proclaim their themselves to be made up of 'civilized' people, to inflict such barbarous torture on errant and convicted humans? You put a person in solitary confinement, and they are not able to cope, so they rebel, and then the system uses their reaction to prolong their inhumane confinement, and it goes on and on..? Surely, that is madness and not justice. 

Whatever a person does when they are placed in solitary confined, should not automatically incur further periods of solitary confinement, unless it would have warranted such punishment outside of SC.

This kind of 'institutional sadism' which leads to men and women being callously condemned to solitary confinement and left suffer a living hell, must surely speaks deafeningly of the sadistic indifference of the people who operates it.

Having worked in social care, I am minded of young people who, due to their dangerous and harmful behaviours which place them  and/or others at risk of serious harm, have been placed in 'secure accommodation', subject to due process of the legal system governing such measures. I can also visualise situations in which a convicted person might need to be placed in solitary confinement, for a short period of time, in order to protect him/her and/or others. However, because of the mental and psychological torture and harm which can arise from this kind of incarceration, 

I fail to see how its casual and repeated use can ever be justified. If torture is illegal and unjustified, then prisons in 'civilised societies' cannot act judiciously by torturing men and women who are already incarcerated.

The 'simple things of life' can often makes all the difference in keeping us sane.

OWOHROD