Analyzing Capital Punishment Issues

Capital Punishment

Solitary confinement represents one among the best means of keeping modern-day prisoners from communication and conflict, but has the most injurious effects on their health. Individuals imprisoned in conditions of solitary confinement demonstrate more psychotic behavior compared to normal prisoners; this includes higher rate of suicides (Thesis Statement). After a prisoner loses his/her mental capacity of understanding the reason for his/her imprisonment or punishment, subjecting him/her to solitary confinement is pointless. If one loses one's ability of understanding punishment, the consequences associated with one's actions become irrelevant and have no value. Thus, solitary confinement is crueler than capital punishment.

Lately, the subject of whether or not solitary confinement constitutes greater torture for prisoners than capital punishment (or death penalty), is gaining popularity (Writer Thoughts). The debate has reached a juncture where the favored option is capital punishment.

Solitary Confinement/Capital Punishment Background

During the early part of the 19th century, the concept of prisons was relatively new. Until that time, punishment for criminal offenses was meted out by communities. Some adopted the Hammurabian method of eye-for-eye retaliation, with public executions in packed town squares being the penalty for crimes, ranging from burglary to rape and murder. With the evolution of more nuanced judicial systems, community leaders looked for more civilized punishment methods, and even started toying with the "rehabilitation" concept (Biggs, 2009). The U.S. Supreme Court, in the latter part of the 19th century, started examining the growing pool of European clinical evidence, which demonstrated that solitary confinement was linked to dire psychological consequences. In Germany, where the isolationist Pennsylvania penal model was implemented, doctors noted a sharp rise in cases of psychosis among prison inmates. In the year 1890, the adoption of long-lasting solitary confinement as punishment was condemned by the nation's High Court, which noted that a significant number of inmates reached a stage of semi-fatuousness, while others exhibited violent insanity. Prisons constructed after this era (including Angola) increasingly took the shape of secure dormitories built for captive manual workers, as intended by the Auburn prison system. Prisoners were made to work for prison industries; this activity kept them busy while also aiding the institutions' maintenance. For instance, the "Sing Sing" prison was constructed atop a mine, entirely out of rocks underlying it, using the efforts of inmates.

The Eastern State Penitentiary, where the infamous "Philadelphia system" was born, failed miserably and closed down in the year 1971 -- a century after the "total isolation" idea was called off. However, what the system revealed concerning solitary confinement's torturous effects would have been attractive to people more concerned with retribution than with rehabilitation. In the last century, solitary confinement took the shape of a wholly punitive tool utilized for breaking the spirit of violent, disobedient, or disruptive inmates. However, it has seldom been employed as a long-duration punishment even by the most vengeful of wardens. After all, while broken spirits supposedly eliminate danger, danger is created by broken minds (Biggs, 2009). Nevertheless, in the last twenty-five years, the modern penal system appears to have reverted to the practices (minus the theories) governing Eastern State's Philadelphia System. Today's society does not trust the "penitent" element of "penitentiary" any longer and, clearly, "corrections" systems fail to "correct" disruptive behavior; rather, they appear to be breeding it. One may contend that, at present, nearly every maximum-security American prisoner is maintained in a sort of solitary setting for long durations of their prison terms. The introduction of "control unit" and "supermax" prisons during the early seventies has resulted in pod-based "security housing units" and prisons wherein each inmate is isolated in a separate cell for nearly the entire day.

Activists and lawyers have, for many decades, called into question the constitutionality of the severest punishments meted out by the American crime justice system. Is it acceptable to administer lethal injections? Are firing squads constitutional? Is life imprisonment the right punishment for drug-possessors, pirates and individuals caught passing rubber checks? However, one hardly gets to hear anyone raising questions against solitary confinement -- the severest and most inhumane of all punishments (Kozinski, 2016). There are about 100,000 individuals who are subject to 23 hours per day of solitude in parking space-sized cells. In a society wherein making rap videos may land one in solitary confinement for no less than 3 years, we must ask more questions regarding how an individual gets into this confinement, what their "life" becomes after being isolated, and how might they get out.

During the early 19th century, America heralded an era of imprisonment in solitary prison cells with no stimulation or access to fellow human beings, as a means of rehabilitation, which ended in disastrous results, as inmates suffered serious psychological damage (Torture: The Use of Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons). Seeing its dreadful consequences, society practically abandoned the practice. However, more than a hundred years hence, it has, unfortunately, made a comeback. Rather than confining and torturing prisoners in dirty, dark underground holes, we are now confining them to sterile, well-lit boxes; similar psychological effects have been observed. Currently, several thousand individuals all over the U.S. are seen detained inside small, windowless concrete cells in nearly absolute solitude for 22 to 24 hours each day. These cells are furnished with a shower and a toilet. Each cell's door has a slit that is utilized by guards for slipping food trays in. Prisoners serving solitary confinement usually don't enjoy contact visit and telephone call rights. Their "recreation" entails being shackled/handcuffed and taken for 60 minutes to a different solitary cell in which they are allowed to pace alone, before returning to their original cell.

The earliest established laws pertaining to the death penalty date back to the 18th Century B.C. Babylon's Hammurabi had a code that codified death sentence for twenty-five crimes. This death sentence is also seen in: the Hittite Code (14th Century B.C.); Athens' Draconian Code (17th Century B.C.), in which every sort of crime was punished by death; and the Twelve Tables of Rome (5th Century B.C.). Death penalties were meted out through crucifixion, burning alive, impalement, beating the convicted individual to death, or drowning (Introduction to the Death Penalty). USA's death sentence is mostly influenced by the British. European settlers who came to America brought with them their capital punishment concept. The first documented execution in America -- that of Spanish spy, Captain George Kendall -- took place in Virginia's Jamestown colony in the year 1608. Sir Thomas Dale, governor of Virginia enacted moral, martial and divine laws in 1612. Under Dale's code, death sentence was awarded even for trivial offenses like trading with natives, stealing grapes, or killing chickens. Each colony had its own laws pertaining to the death sentence. Massachusetts Bay Colony's first execution took place in 1630, despite New England's Capital Laws not being implemented until many years later. New York Colony's Duke's Laws were implemented in 1665; under this code, death sentence was meted out even to individuals who denied the existence of the true Lord or hit one's parent(s) (Introduction to the Death Penalty).

Hazards of Solitary Confinement

It is widely agreed that solitary confinement represents a torturous punishment. This sentiment is asserted by John McCain, U.S. Senator and ex-prisoner of the Vietnam War, who states that this form of punishment is capable of weakening one's resistance and crushing one's spirit in a way no other mistreatment can. McCain's experience corroborates researchers' consensus that solitary confinement has immense adverse psychological impacts on prisoners (The Dangerous Overuse of Solitary Confinement in the United States). A psychiatrist working for the Red Cross compared physical torture and solitary confinement in a work published in 2007, and noted that solitary confinement for extended durations in prisons cell is considered the toughest torment to endure by hardened convicts accustomed to abuse and rigorous conditions. According to a Californian prison psychiatrist, it is a well-known psychiatric concept that any isolated individual will end up falling apart and losing his/her sanity.

Aside from the manifestation of a greater number of psychiatric symptoms, those who are sentenced to solitary confinement are normally associated with higher rates of suicide and self-harm. A research conducted by the American Journal of Public Health in February 2014 revealed that New York inmates sentenced to solitary confinement were almost seven times more prone to self-harm compared to general population inmates. The effect appeared to be particularly evident in youngsters and individuals suffering from serious mental ailments. In Californian prisons, 73% of suicide cases took place in isolation cells in 2004; such units constituted not even to 10% of the overall prison population of California (The Dangerous Overuse of Solitary Confinement in the United States). Suicide rates in isolation cells of Indiana's corrections department were nearly thrice that of prison units without segregation. Recognizing these hazards, Mental Health America, American Psychiatric Association, National Alliance on Mental Illness, Society of Correctional Physicians, American Public Health Association, and other such organizations published official policy statements in opposition to extended solitary confinement, particularly for mentally-ill prisoners.

Researchers have proven that extended solitary confinement leads to chronic, amplified nervousness and anxiety, insomnia, headaches, chronic tiredness or lethargy, heart palpitations, early morbidity, nightmares, higher hypertension rates, and fear of imminent nervous breakdowns (Torture: The Use of Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons). Obsessive ruminations, irrational anger, violent fantasies, mood swings, overall deterioration, suicidal ideation, hallucinations, confused thought processing, chronic depression, social withdrawal, oversensitivity to stimulus, and emotional flatness are other noted impacts of solitary confinement. Exposure to the life-shattering living conditions experienced under solitary confinement is clearly a brutal, unusual punishment that violates the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment. Moreover, the global community condemns the brutal employment of solitary as torture.

In May of 2012, CCR (Center for Constitutional Rights) filed a suit against California State for its employment of extended solitary confinement at Pelican Bay. Ashker v. Governor of California represents a class action federal-level suit that challenged Pelican Bay's due process deprivation and long-term solitary confinement, on the basis of rights guaranteed by Constitutional Amendments VIII and XIV (Torture: The Use of Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons). This case challenges the heartless unconstitutional living conditions of thousands of prison inmates. It argues that one cannot impose 10+ years of isolation on any convict, whether perfectly sane or not; prisoners need to be given meaningful notice concerning why they are confined to this punishment, and this status of theirs needs to be frequently reviewed. While significant reforms have been made in California's solitary confinement placement and retention process as a response to the lawsuit and hunger strikes by prisoners, prisons such as Pelican Bay continue to seriously violate inmates' rights. The case went to trial last year. This suit by CCR is the most recent in an extensive history of oppositions to the practice of solitary confinement (Torture: The Use of Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons). The American Supreme Court, in the Wilkinson v. Austin case, made a unanimous decision in favor of CCR's assertion that prison officers weren't authorized to confine anybody to extended solitary confinement within "super maximum" prisons before first allowing them to challenge this placement. In a show of solidarity, CCR has worked with hunger-striking inmates, while also engaging in advocacy in opposition to the implementation of solitary confinement punishments.

The biggest prison strike in the history of Californian prisons saw roughly 30,000 prisoners on a hunger strike. Their chief grievance was solitary confinement, wherein they were subject to years or even decades of near-total deprivation of social contact, as well as the barest sensory stimuli. Our brain cannot adapt to these conditions, and hence, psychologists and activists term it as torture. In their opinion, solitary confinement is a grave anathema to mankind's needs, usually driving prisoners insane. Isolated individuals are prone to anger, anxiety, erratic mood swings, hallucinations, etc. and lose control over impulses (Keim, 2013). These problems are aggravated among individuals susceptible to mental ailment, and may potentially give rise to permanent changes in their minds. A Wright Institute psychiatrist Terry Kupers, who is a prominent advocate against solitary confinement, states that a number of symptoms are found almost universally, and can be so commonly found that it can be constituted as a syndrome. He believes the damage is permanent.

The testimonies and reports in this regard bring to mind sci-fi dystopia and medieval cruelty. For all but one hour a day, in euphemistically-labeled called "special housing" or "administrative segregation" units, inmates are detained in cells the size of a bathroom, under conditions of permanently-on fluorescent lights and constant video surveillance. Their only social contact comes from infrequent glimpses of fellow prisoners, short video conferences with family and friends, and encounters with prison guards. They are allowed some books for stimulation, but usually have no access to a radio or TV set. In the year 2011, a second hunger strike in Californian prisons helped inmates secure amenities like wall calendars and wool hats for the cold season (Keim, 2013). Enforced isolation may be for years, or even decades. One can understand these horrors by hearing first-hand accounts from prisoners. A Florida adolescent stated that all that was left for him to do was to "go crazy," as reported in a paper pertaining to juvenile prisoners' solitary confinement. However, some people may consider these stories as potentially misleading and powerful anecdotes, that aren't necessarily representative; here's where science comes in.

National Religious Campaign against Torture's prison policy expert Heather Rice states that corrections officials often reported that prisoners feigned mental illness, and actually hearing the hard science is quite powerful. Scientific researches on solitary confinement's damaging effects emerged in waves, starting from the mid-1800s, when this practice lost widespread favor among Americans and Europeans. The 50s witnessed the emergence of more research works, in response to reported brainwashing and isolation incidents in the course of the Korean War (Keim, 2013). Latest research works were inspired by the renewed acceptance of this form of punishment in America in the 80s, following cuts in rehabilitation programs and prison overcrowding. Consistent patterns are seen, which center on previously-mentioned extreme anxiety, mood swings, flatness, anger, hallucinations, and impulse control loss. With no exposure to stimuli, inmates might end up becoming hypersensitive to every stimulus. Typically, they are seen to obsess uncontrollably over minor personal grievances and details, as though their mind is no longer their own. Other routine issues include panic attacks, memory loss, cognitive function loss, and depression.

Capital Punishment is a Merciful Alternative

Prior to favoring death sentence above solitary confinement, one must carefully consider what one is inflicting on people whose lives are spared. Shifting convicts sentenced to death from death row units to "supermax" units might appease the collective conscience; however, these people are now condemned to decades of torture, before which a swift death sentence might seem merciful (Kozinski, 2016). When executions are undoubtedly cruel punishments, the shattering psychological consequence of being confined to isolation cannot be ignored. The report, Time-In-Cell, demonstrated that inmates suffering solitary confinement got to spend just about 3 hours every week outside of their cells. On weekends, these prisoners were usually not allowed out. Furthermore, the Report revealed that these inmates enjoyed restricted access to telephone calls, family visits, support services, and personal property. Some cells measured only 45 square-feet, while others (particularly cells in Deep South prisons) had no air conditioning. Missouri prison inmates were allotted a shower once every 3 days. To top it all, some state prisons don't even allow solitary confinement inmates to keep their loved ones' photographs.