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The American criminal justice system currently has roughly 2.3 million people locked up in
more than 6,000 correctional facilities.
And according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are more than 80,000 prisoners in solitary
confinement, and it’s one of the worst experiences a person can go through.
What if you were thrown into solitary confinement?
What’s it like to live inside that teeny tiny cell?
And what effect would it have on your physical and mental health?
It can vary state to state and prison to prison, but on average, inmates in solitary confinement
are kept isolated for 22 to 24 hours a day.
Trips to solitary confinement, often called the hole, can be for a couple days, weeks,
or sometimes even years.
In one especially extreme example, a prisoner was kept in solitary confinement for 36 years
straight!
You could wind up in solitary confinement for any number of reasons - from serious infractions
like fighting with another inmate, to minor ones, like talking back to a guard or getting
caught with banned items.
So what’s so bad about a little bit of alone time?
Well first of all the conditions are terrible.
Prison food already has a bad reputation, but many solitary confinement prisoners are
only given something called Nutraloaf, a kind of bland log of meat loaf with almost no flavor.
And you won’t be pulling up a chair to a table for dinner.
No, most solitary confinement cells, if they have any furniture at all, consist of a small
bed and a tiny table, both of which are bolted to the wall.
But being alone can’t do any physical harm, right?
Actually, an inmate’s physical health will often decline severely while in solitary confinement.
Many inmates develop a number of conditions ranging from hypertension, chronic headaches,
trembling, sweaty palms, extreme dizziness and heart palpitations.
On top of that, due to the extremely small nature of their cells, prisoners’ eyesight
will often get worse.
They become nearsighted and are unable to focus on anything far away.
A lack of appetite and drastic weight loss is often accompanied with irregular digestion
and the effect of not talking to anyone for long periods of time can weaken vocal chords,
making it difficult to speak for more than a brief period of time.
Not only is a prisoner’s physical wellbeing negatively affected, so is their mental health.
Prisoners’ emotions in solitary confinement can swing drastically from feelings of panic,
to rage, irritability, hostility, or poor impulse control.
Stress, panic attacks, feelings of hopelessness, withdrawal, and self harm are all too common.
Even when compared to prisoners within the general prison population, rates of self-harm,
such as cutting and banging one’s head against the cell wall, are particularly high.
One prisoner said he was so starved for human interaction that he befriended a wasp that
flew into his cell.
He was so desperate for a friend that he would feed and have conversations with it.
Cognitively speaking, solitary confinement can do a lot of damage to a prisoner’s ability
to process information.
There are many reports of memory loss and impaired concentration with extreme confusion
and disorientation in time and space.
Because of this, many inmates are unable to read or watch television, which are usually
their only available entertainment activities.
Adding onto the cognitive deterioration of prisoners, the inability to maintain a coherent
flow of thoughts often occurs.
This disrupted thinking can lead to symptoms of psychosis.
Psychosis is a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that
contact with external reality is lost.
Inmates who exhibit symptoms of psychosis report experiencing hallucinations, illusions,
and paranoia.
Some prisoners’ symptoms get so dangerous that hospitalization is required.
Maybe the saddest part is that these physical and physiological repercussions to solitary
confinement don’t end once prisoners are back in the general population, or released
from prison.
It can take a lot of time and care to make sure the long-lasting mental and physical
health concerns are addressed.
What would you do to survive solitary confinement?
Tell us in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe for more Fuzzy and Nutz!