About an hour ago I listened to this episode of the CBC show …..Ideas, entitled Alone Inside.
It is about solitary confinement, its history, its effects on people, and whether or not it’s torture. I highly recommend listening to it, as it is deeply fascinating stuff, but it’s not required for the reading of this commentary.
The original idea of solitary confinement, back when the term “penitentiary” literally meant “a place for people to be penitent”, was that being given some time completely alone would be good for the soul of the sinner. It would give them time without distractions or interactions in which to think about their crimes and make some peace with their conscience and their God.
So kind of like an amped up version of being sent to bed without supper so you can think about what you’ve done.
The key element is that is was not, repeat, not meant as a punishment. The people who brought the penitentiary system into being were not big on punishment. In face, their desire was for a more humane way of dealing with criminals than the previous barbaric methods like the stocks or the lash.
So solitary confinement, like so many things, began with nothing but the most sterling of intentions. But the truth is, isolation is extremely bad for people, as is an unchanging and uniform environment, as is a long term lack of mental and sensory stimulation, and solitary confinement involves all three.
I would argue that we might have been better off with the lash. At least that can heal.
These facts established, I have a few things I would like to say on the subject, and I will begin with the political/ethical.
As a humanist, I am heartened by this upswell of concern about solitary confinement. It certainly seems like people are increasingly willing to consider carrying the cause of greater compassion forward on this issue. It is mostly liberal intellectuals that are talking about it now, but that’s how all populist appeals for greater mercy begin.
Personally, I would eliminate it. Certainly, it should only be used as a cooling-off measure. Something intended just to give a prisoner time to calm down before rejoining the prisoner population.
But we cannot ever eliminate it entirely, because what the people on the podcast failed to mention was that there will always been a small number of mad dog prisoners who will be extremely dangerous to everyone they come in contact with and for them, cutting off all their contact with others is the only solution.
That, however, only needs to be physical isolation. Allowing those prisoners some other form of non-physical contact with others might be feasible. Some kind of open intercom system, perhaps, or a very limited Internet connection that only connects to a set of chat rooms for all the inmates.
All this would also be contingent on good behaviour, because there is no point in giving Mad Dog McGraw another laptop if he’s only going to tear it apart with his teeth again. But even with the most violent prisoners, there should be someone whose job it is to come talk with them for an hour a day (from outside the cell, of course).
Anyone who can’t handle even that probably should be in a psychiatric facility instead of prison.
So much for the philosophical angle, on to the personal.
I have a lot of first hand experience with isolation. I have been isolated, to various degrees, for most of my life. I went for long periods with no friends and scant attention from my parents. In a house with six people living in it, I was alone most of the time. I would spend my days going to and from school alone, staying in my room reading (or later, on the computer playing video games) alone. or watching TV alone.
And of course, becoming depressed added psychological isolation to the mix. In a very real way, I feel alone even when I am with my friends, because the psychological scar tissue I bear separates me from others.
There could be a world of love and acceptance right outside my door, but it still wouldn’t get in. I would never feel it. I am just too numb inside.
And as I was listening to the show, I couldn’t help but look around this bedroom of mine, the room with unlocked doors which is nevertheless a sort of jail cell for me in which I spent most of my waking hours. My mental illness is the real prison, and there are a lot of similarities between depression and incarceration.
In both cases, you are isolated from society and forced to spend all your time just fighting boredom. It limits you, but it also protects you from having to deal with the real world, adult responsibilities, and the existential terror of freedom.
And if you think that my cell at least doesn’t have anyone who wants to shiv me, you should sit down for a nice lunch with my inner demons some day, and see what you think then.
Nevertheless, I think solitary confinement would kill me. I am barely keeping my fudge with the level of isolation I experience now, and I have the whole Internet to talk to now. Without that, I would just plain leave reality.
Unless I could write. If I could write, I could survive. Even if it was just longhand on paper, I would be able to keep it together if I could just write, and maybe send things to publishers now and then.
The episode resonates with me so much that when I first saw the title, Alone Inside, I just assumed it would be about depression. That’s where my mind instantly went.
Luckily, with my new resolve to eliminate pressure, plans, self-judgment, and all that crap, I have a path before me that leads out of this dank and dingy cell of mine.
I am a pretty amazing dude.
And I deserve better than this.
