Constitutional Law

Atul Gawande Examines Prisons' Use of Solitary Confinement: Is it Torture?

American prisons hold tens of thousands and some prison officials decide to sentence many of them to long-term solitary confinement – a worst-of-the-worst argument for imprisoning humans, or at least those convicted. We make these decisions based on all kinds of study and opinion that suggest this is the way to imprison some convicts. But does solitary confinement amount to torture thereby violating international agreements and weakening the nation's ability to lecture others on how they deprive their imprisoned of some basic human rights.

For The New Yorker, Atul Gawande looks at the American prison system and its use of long-term solitary confinement and its effect on the nation's standing in world.

Gawande writes:

Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.

But many prison officials believe confining inmates for long stretches of time is just punishment. Instead, Gawande writes, it destroys humans – their minds and physical ability to control themselves:

One day, three years into his (Journalist Terry Anderson's solitary confinement as a hostage of Hezbollah in Lebanon) ordeal, he snapped. He walked over to a wall and began beating his forehead against it, dozens of times. His head was smashed and bleeding before the guards were able to stop him.

Gawande's 'Hellhole,' from The New Yorker's March 2009 issue is here.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on April 04, 2009 (boomark / email).