Supermax Inmates

Recreation ended and Officer Law was locking down the inmates on the bottom tier. In Cell F3 Inmate Todd was lying down on his bunk (bottom) his head facing the wall, backside exposed, blanket covering his head, fully clothed, awake and his cellmate Patrick Michael Argoe was

“LockDown” is the short story of a man, named Evan Hopkins, and his time spent during his prison sentence. Hopkins received 16 years in prison for armed robbery and spent his sentence at Nottoway Correctional Center in Virginia. Hopkins describes the prison in great detail down to how it operates on a lockdown, hence the name of the story. In the period of the lockdown, prison guards checked for contraband hidden in cells, or in possession of the inmates. Most of the lockouts last for a week, but this one was due to a botched escape attempt.

TO: Thomas R. Krane, P.h.D., Acting Director of Federal Bureau of Prisons FROM: Roger Rael, Graduate Student University of Colorado-Denver DATE: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 RE: Evaluating the consequences of continued super-max confinement I. Issue The issue is broad and national in scope. Whether the Federal Bureau of Prisons should continue supporting the use of super-max facilities is a matter of extreme societal and legal questions. Solitary confinement, for an extended or indefinite period of time, implicates constitutional rights and questions our morality as a society.

According to American Friends Service Committee, “numerous studies have documented the harmful psychological effects of long-term solitary confinement, which can produce debilitating symptoms and result in an increased risk of suicide and the effects are magnified for two particularly vulnerable populations: juveniles, whose brains are still developing, and people with mental health issues...” (2017). My topic of discussion deals with the injustice of social isolation in our prison system and the effects on an individual 's mental health. Kalief Browder a fairly normal adolescent residing Bronx, NY. Kalief endured false imprisonment at the age of sixteen; he spent three years and 800 days of those years were served in solitary confinement.

The prison was a stark gray with not a single decoration. The cells were equiped with a lever locking mechaism that could unlock 50 cells at a time. Women who were in Sing Sing in 1943 revolted. They got ahold of homemade knifes. The board director told the police officers to stop beating the convicts when they thought necessary.

Major Ethical Issues of Solitary Confinement Solitary confinement can affect a person’s physical and mental health simply because it deprives an individual of their need to interact with others on a daily basis. Solitary confinement, which is used to restrain violent and volatile inmates from the general prison population, is done in increments ranging from several months to years. In an article retrieved from the American Psychological Association, ‘Alone, in ‘the Hole’’, the author states that, “for most of the 20th century, prisoners' stays in solitary confinement were relatively short.” This was the standing rule, in which inmates visited what is known as ‘the hole’, for several weeks to months. As time went by, the average length of stay

Conover describes the facility as a warehouse; having different kinds of criminals under one roof. One day Conover was observing the visiting room, reflecting on his mixed sympathies with the prisoners, as opposed to his colleagues. "It was all about absence, wasn't it-- the absence of imprisoned men from the lives of the people who loved them; the absence of love in prison. And also-- what you could never forget-- the absence in the hearts of decent people, the holes that criminals punched in their lives, the absence of the things they took: money, peace of mind, health, and

Inmates in confinement have no contact with any human beings other than the guards, and this often leads to extreme mental health problems. Additionally, many inmates do not receive proper medical treatment and are left with severe physical health complications. One example of these health problems is presented in an excerpt from the American Law Yearbook from 2017. In this excerpt, the authors say, “Those held in solitary confinement are often subject to physical torture, including different types of restraints. Prisoners report that they also endure nonphysical torture, such as sensory deprivation, forced insomnia, permanent bright lighting, and extreme temperature.”

Solitary confinement is the act of housing a convict for 22-23 hours a day in an isolated cell, completely free from any human contact for an extended period of time. Going from days to possibly decades while sitting in these cells. There are more than 80,000 men, women, and children in solitary confinement in prisons across the United States according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Not including thousands more in jails, juvenile facilities, immigration detention centers and military prisons. After experiencing confinement some inmates suffer from negative mental health effects that can possibly lead to suicide.

Within this quote we see that in St. Clair prison, inmates get raped and stabbed. These are reasons why prisons should be reformed. Prisoners shouldn’t be hurt for whatsoever problems. Conversely, Penal Reform International article suggested different reasons to reform prisons one that stood out to reform the particular prison in Alabama was this, Provide a healthy, safe environment. “Spaces that are filled with sunlight, outside views, therapeutic color schemes and normalized materials, encourage inmates’ participation, reduce stress, incidents and assaults and decrease staff absenteeism.”

Chapter 1: Ghostly Inmates Trapped in a Jail Built in 1885, this Victorian three storey brick building is one of the only three revolving jails left in USA. Also called ‘squirrel cages’, there are 30 in total and resemble pieces of pie in a circular jail. The jail was built on a land that had once been a morgue of an Episcopalian church. Between 1184 and 1969, for a period of 85 years, this jail has been occupied by the superintendents and their families as well as prisoners.

Some might argue that solitary confinement is actually effective and has its benefits, however this is not the case since this punishment only seems to make criminals much more dangerous when they leave prison than they were before and research shows that inmates who left solitary confinement experience increased anger and end up committing the kind of criminality that society is looking to prevent by using this method of punishment. Thus, solitary confinement ultimately fails as a rehabilitative measure, and as a way to "settle down" problematic

Before the centralization of prison systems, prisoners had the privilege to decorate their prison cell, personalize their prison clothing, and have different types of furniture, such as bookshelves, rugs, and chairs. However, this changed when the prison system became more centralized. Austin and Irwin (2012) explained that “the centralization of authority and the formation of rules and regulations in prison systems resulted in stringent and uniform routines”, which eliminated the privileges of the prisoners. In our course textbook, Dannie Martian, a former prisoner at Lompoc, provided insight on the changes that occurred at the prison in which he was incarcerated.

Additionally, in an attempt to foster an increase in professionalism within the correctional community, care and consideration must be taken with the care and housing of inmates both privately operated and those operated by some branch of the government. “The quality of prisons has improved from the past, but there continue to be too many inhumane new prisons. New construction does not always result in a prison conductive to humane incarceration” (Bartollas,

Another misconception about the jail was that I thought the inmates were going to be like “monsters” but in reality they looked like everyday citizens. There is no ‘look’ for an inmate, you obviously couldn 't tell who was charged with what. They looked like normal people. In the jail, it was interesting to see the two way mirrors, knowing somebody is looking at me and I can’t see them. I was surprised to find out that the officers didn’t carry around guns for safety reasons because if an inmate gets their hands on an officer 's gun they can use it for their advantage.