April 12 (Bloomberg) -- The use of solitary confinement in
U.S. prisons and detention centers has broken the bounds of
reason and decency. The federal government reported last month
that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency routinely
holds hundreds of immigrants in solitary confinement -- even
though the inmates are detained on civil charges. The news
underscored the continued outlier status of the U.S., which
subjects tens of thousands of inmates, including the nonviolent,
to a practice that much of the world regards as torture.
Solitary confinement, wrote Senator John McCain, a former
prisoner of war, “crushes your spirit and weakens your
resistance more effectively than any other form of
mistreatment.” Long-term isolation impairs the brain, which is
why as far back as 1890 the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that it
led to insanity and suicide in some inmates, “while those who
stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most
cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any
subsequent service to the community.”
