On June 19th, the US Senate Judiciary Committee held a
hearing on solitary confinement in the US. Ohio houses hundreds of prisoners in solitary confinement at any time. There are over 400 solitary cells at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP), 100 solitary cells at death row, each prison has it's own solitary cells, the "hole".
The hearing is called “Reassessing Solitary Confinement: The Human Rights, Fiscal and Public Safety Consequences” some of our friends at OSP have written briefs and testimonies for the hearings. They'll be posted as soon as we get copies.
SolitaryWatch.com has a
couple of
posts about the hearing.
Democracy Now has this summary and analysis of the hearings, starts at 12:25.
B.F. Skinner (google him and the phrase, behavior modification) tactics were the norm when I was confined to prison with a couple years of solitary confinement. Light deprivation....no interaction with other human beings (since guards are not human beings), tampering with mail, lack of lights, etc....all were daily routine and the psychological problems associated with such barbaric practices are enormous. Solitary confinement is no different than the 'silent system' used back in the day (it was used in Ohio prisons in 1990)which resulted in a lot of prisoners going mad.
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