More than 80,000 prisoners are held in solitary confinement in the United States, and about 25,000 of them are in long-term solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is considered one of the harshest punishments for prisoners because of the way it seriously affects mental health. The U.S. is one of the few countries that uses long-term solitary confinement.
More facts about solitary confinement:
Multiple studies show that being in long-term solitary confinement increases a person’s propensity for violence, psychosis, depression, hallucinations and panic attacks.
The practice of solitary confinement is nothing new. In the U.S., it was started by the Quakers as a “humane” alternative that gave prisoners time to think about their crimes and possibly decide to change. It went out of fashion in the early 1900s as being unnecessarily cruel, and it has been abolished in many countries, including most of Europe.
In some prisons, a typical day in solitary confinement includes 15 minutes in a computer-controlled shower and about an hour to exercise alone. The other 22 hours are spent in a concrete cell with no natural light.