“It’s an awful thing, solitary. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” – John McCain
(MintPress) – Sarah Shourd spent nearly 15 months in an Iranian prison, with all but 345 hours of it in complete isolation. Shourd, one of three American hikers detained by Iranian authorities on suspicion of spying in 2009, carries the mental effects of solitary confinement, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Shourd’s experience in Iran reads as a torture tale, and the United Nations (U.N.) would agree that solitary confinement practices are torture. Yet, thousands of inmates in the United States live in solitary confinement, and many for non-violent crimes.
The effects of isolation have been studied and documented by psychiatrists for some time. In a written account of her experiences for the New York Times, Shourd documented instances of hallucinations, hysteria, self-harm and cardiac arrest.
“After two months with next to no human contact, my mind began to slip. Some days, I heard phantom footsteps coming down the hall. I spent large portions of my days crouched down on all fours by a small slit in the door, listening. In the periphery of my vision, I began to see flashing lights, only to jerk my head around to find that nothing was there,” Shourd wrote. “More than once, I beat at the walls until my knuckles bled and cried myself into a state of exhaustion. At one point, I heard someone screaming, and it wasn’t until I felt the hands of one of the friendlier guards on my face, trying to revive me, that I realized the screams were my own.”
Last fall, a U.N. expert called on all countries to ban the use of solitary confinement unless it is needed under “very exceptional circumstances.” The organization called for absolute prohibition for solitary confinement when it pertains to juveniles. Juan Mendez, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on torture, said solitary confinement could be used for the protection of gay, lesbian or bisexual inmates or others who would be threatened by prison gangs. Mendez stressed that the confinement should be used for as short a time as possible.
A system with free reign
Shourd’s experience is by no means an unusual one, both domestically and abroad. Her time in captivity and isolation shaped her into an activist against the use of solitary confinement.
“I was shocked to find out that the United Nations Convention Against Torture, one of the few conventions the United States has ratified, does not mention solitary confinement,” Shourd wrote. “I learned that there are untold numbers of prisoners around the world in solitary, including an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 in the United States.”
But Shourd’s numbers may be on the low end. Quantifying the number of prisoners in solitary confinement is difficult because most states do not publish such data or even collect it. The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) has conceded that figures are inconsistent both because many states fail to track such statistics and because there is no consensus as to what constitutes as a supermax prison – the type of prison where solitary confinement inmate serve their sentences.
“Uncertainty about what defines a supermax prison, along with different counting procedures from State to State, make it impossible to have an accurate count of the number of supermax institutions or how many inmates are confined under the conditions associated with these prisons,” the NCJRS wrote.
Illinois Democrat Senator Dick Durbin has followed solitary confinement in his state and around the country. His work with the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in 2005, nearly 82,000 people were held in some form of restrictive, isolated housing. In Illinois, Durbin said 56 percent of the prison population has spent some time in segregated quarters.
It wasn’t always like that, however. The rise of supermax prisons are arguably a reactionary tactic to the influx of crack cocaine sentences in the 1980s. In a 2010 Senate hearing, the first ever on solitary confinement as a form of torture, Durbin said the solitary confinement policies made sense to many people at the time as a means to deal with the spike in cocaine offenses. He followed by saying studies into the psychology of confinement show that it may prove to be an unconstitutional measure, however.
“The United States holds far more prisoners in segregation or solitary confinement than any other democratic nation on earth,” Durbin testified. “Now know that solitary confinement isn’t just used for the worst of the worst. Instead, we’re seeing an alarming increase in isolation for those who don’t really need to be there, and for many, many vulnerable groups like immigrants, children, LGBT inmates, supposedly there for their own protection.”
Psychological effects
Anthony Graves is a former Texas death row inmate who was exonerated after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced in 1992. While speaking at the same Senate hearing as Durbin, Graves recalled his 18 years in prison, most of it spent in solitary confinement. Graves compared the policing of inmate to training dogs.
“Like all death row inmates, I was kept in solitary confinement, under some of the worst conditions imaginable, with the filth, the food, the total disrespect of human dignity. I lived under the rules of a system that is literally driving men out of their minds. I survived the torture,” Graves testified. “I had no television, no telephone, and most importantly, I had no physical contact with another human being for 10 of the 18 years I was incarcerated. Today I have a hard time being around a group of people for long periods of time without feeling too crowded. No one can begin to imagine the psychological effects isolation has on another human being.”
But Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry Stuart Grassian has taken it upon himself to study the mental effects of isolation in humans. Grassian has studied more than 200 prisoners subjected to solitary confinement and found that many of the inmates who were originally free of mental illness developed an acute mental illness of some form, which Grassian attributed to the restricted housing. He also found instances where the confinement caused severe exacerbation or reoccurrence of a preexisting illness.
Grassian compiled seven psychiatric disorder categories that were most common among the solitary inmates he studies: hypersensitivity to external stimuli; perceptual distortions, illusions and hallucinations; panic attacks; difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory; intrusive obsessional thoughts; overt paranoia and problems with impulse control.
“Almost a third of the prisoners described hearing voices, often in whispers and often saying frightening things to them,” Grassian wrote in his final report of the study. “There were also reports of noises taking on increasing meaning and frightening significance. For example, ‘I hear noises, can’t identify them—starts to sound like sticks beating men, but I’m pretty sure no one is being beaten . . . I’m not sure.’”
Information compiled by Solitary Watch, a group dedicated to shining light on the use of Solitary Confinement in the U.S., showed that an estimated 20 percent of all inmates in America’s prison system are “seriously mentally ill.” In a study of 20 prisoners who volunteered to spend one week in solitary confinement, all of the prisoners showed decreased EEG activity, an indicator of increased levels of stress, anxiety and tension.
The psychological strain can also have deadly consequences. In 2005, 44 prisoners in California committed suicide, with 70 percent of those serving sentences in solitary confinement. Solitary Watch says that percentage is consistent with nationwide figures. In a study of 401 suicides in America’s prison system since 1986, two-thirds of the suicides were committed in solitary confinement quarters.
The recent high-profile case of Bradley Manning, the Army Private accused of leaking confidential wartime documents to WikiLeaks, has oftentimes focused on the treatment and solitary confinement used against him. Manning committed a nonviolent crime and was said to be a nonviolent and cooperative detainee. He was, however, determined to be a “Maximum Custody Detainee.”
For 23 hours a day and for nearly a year, Manning was held in solitary confinement. The U.S. government has said it was to protect Manning, as it feared he inflict self-harm on himself. Yet, Manning was never put on a formal suicide watch.
Mendez, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on torture, denounced the treatment of Manning, saying it was cruel and inhumane to hold someone not convicted of any crime in such conditions.
“The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence,” Mendez wrote.
The case of Thomas Silverstein
Since 1983 – 29 years and counting – Thomas Silverstein, 60, has spent his time in solitary confinement all over the country. Silverstein is currently the longest held prisoner in solitary confinement, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
A convicted murderer when entering prison in 1983, Silverstein would be charged with three other murders while in prison, one of which was of a prison guard. But Silverstein has continued to say that the conditions of solitary confinement contributed to his behavior that resulted in the subsequent murders after his incarceration.
Silverstein is currently filing a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons, contending that his decades in isolation constitute as cruel and unusual punishment. Many in the prison system feel Silverstein had to be an example to other prisoners not to lash out at prison guards. In the 1993 book “The Hot House Life Inside Leavenworth Prison” by Pete Earley, a Bureau of Prisons official told the author that Silverstein’s crimes fit his punishment.
“When an inmate kills a guard, he must be punished,” the official said. “We can’t execute Silverstein, so we have no choice but to make his life a living hell. Otherwise other inmates will kill guards too. There has to be some supreme punishment. Every convict knows what Silverstein is going through. We want them to realize that if they cross the same line that he did, they will pay a heavy price.”
It is very possible Silverstein could live out the remainder of his life in solitary confinement, unless he is moved to another unit. His prison term is scheduled to expire November 2, 2095.