Hacker News Reader

Comment by wolfgke | Hacker News Reader

This is a serious question, so please don't downvote me if you consider it ridiculous.

Intuitively I would say that I were locked together in a cell with some other inmate, i would be a much worse fate than if I were locked in solitary confinement. Being locked in solitary confinement is surely not a nice fate, but as Sartre expressed it: "Hell is other people". In this sense I pretty surely would consider being locked with another inmate in a cell as the real "hell on earth".

So what is so bad about solitary confinement in comparison to non-solitary confinement? As I said: If I were to choose, I would immediately choose solitary confinement by far.

View on HN

A few answers:

As a concrete box, usually windowless and monotone, solitary confinement is a form of sensory deprivation. Studies of its effects on mental health are similar to that of extended sensory deprivation. Some units like this offer books; many don’t. Fee to none offer radio or television. Inmates have been known to suffer hallucinations in solitary.

Two, it renders prisoners even more vulnerable to abuse by officers than even regular inmates. There is no one to see what happens to you. The stress and its effects on your body are borne whether or not you are ultimately victimized.

Three, Sartre can say what he likes, but humans are social creatures. By and large, cutting off social contact is a reliable way to induce depression and anxiety. Indeed, inmates in solitary often develop severe symptoms of depression and anxiety, which may become long-lasting or permanent. These inmates are at a massively increased risk of suicide. It has been argued that solitary doesn’t create mental disease, it just massively exacerbated underlying mental disease. But since some measure of depression and anxiety is extraordinarily common in inmates, I consider that a meaningless distinction.

Four, just as an empirical matter, there are a pile of studies on the negative mental health effects of solitary confinement. Much like a math proof, “it’s true because it’s true.”

> As a concrete box, usually windowless and monotone

I did not know this (as a non-native speaker of English I just knew "solitary" - "alone"). It is well-known to me that lack of daylight cycle etc. for a longer time can cause medical conditions.

> Two, it renders prisoners even more vulnerable to abuse by officers than even regular inmates.

A really good argument. Accepted.

> Four, just as an empirical matter, there are a pile of studies on the negative mental health effects of solitary confinement. Much like a math proof, “it’s true because it’s true.”

This only shows that for the "average person" it causes problems.

> It is well-known to me that lack of daylight cycle etc. for a longer time can cause medical conditions.

Some prisons have gotten around the requirement that prisoners be exposed to daylight by placing the windows where they cannot be seen, but some of the light can be from the cell. That way they can be say they're providing daylight, it's just that the prisoners cannot see a window. Sometimes it seems that the people who runs prisons are just as sick in the head as they people inside them.

Prison cells should be individual, not shared with other inmates. Both from a security perspective and from an ethical perspective. Everyone, even rapists and murderers deserve personal space. But in most of the world I guess this is unrealistic.

The problem with solitary confinement isn't the cell per se, but that you are locked in your cell all day, every day for months (years) on end. The only human contact you have is limited contact with the guards. If you are lucky you get 30 minutes in the yard. Alone. Over time that can drive anyone insane.

Solitary confinement means absolutely no social interaction at all. Also, sometimes, no light, books, or anything to engage your mind -- it's pretty close to torture.

The alternative is not just "locked in with another inmate." Inmates can interact with much broader groups at various times of the day, have access to books, hobby items, games, gyms, etc.

So now ask yourself -- would you choose solitary confinement over the alternative?

It's total isolation from any humans. And often from light, fresh air, exercise, and possibly even reading materials.

Just you, and your mind, for a long time.

I'm an introvert, and I work from home. I've noticed, though, that I tend to feel a bit....off, if I've had zero social contact in a given day or set of days. Doesn't have to be much, even buying something at a shop is enough.

I can't imagine going for months and years on end.

> Just you, and your mind, for a long time.

I am pretty convinced that this would not be a serious problem for me. It's clearly not comfortable, but also not something that I intuitively would consider as a serious problem to me (perhaps it would be, but intuitively I have a hard time imagining it).

When I think about it, I would probably do lots of long meditation sessions - this sounds like a good way to pass this long time alone. Or exercises to keep the body in shape if possible (see below).

What nevertheless does sound plausible to me is that being alone for such a long time can cause lots of problems for resocialization.

> And often from light, fresh air

This sounds a lot more like a problem to me.

> exercise, and possibly even reading materials.

Serious question for people who know more about prisons: Why is exercise impossible? I mean exercises that need no further sports equipment, such as push-ups, sit-ups etc.

It really depends on the size of the cell. I was in a cell at one point that had just enough room for my mat, and room for me to place my foot on either side of the mat. The floor was filthy, so my mat was like my island. I suppose you could do push ups on your mat, but the lack of space is very psychologically oppressive. I did meditate, and it relieved the stress of being confined alone in that small space, but it was pretty rough. The worst part was trying to fall asleep with all of the ambient noise and light. It's not like sitting at home in your bedroom, I do that now and have no problem being alone for long periods of time (hours and days). Solitary confinement is pretty rough.

Thanks for your personal perspective. So slowly some picture arises in my mind that not being alone for a really long time per se is the real problem in solitary confinement (which I am still really sure that it by tself would not be a problem for me - which does not imply that this holds for other people, too), but rather the other additional circumstances of the "solitary jail life" which are mitigated for "ordinary prisoners".

>but rather the other additional circumstances of the "solitary jail life" which are mitigated for "ordinary prisoners".

In my own comment, I wasn't clear enough that I also had this in mind. There's a lot you can do to make your own environment comfortable. In prison solitary, nothing at all.

Coincidentally, I just finished reading this book. It gives an incredible view into the mind of a hostage kept in similar conditions: https://www.amazon.com/Hostage-Guy-Delisle/dp/1770462791/

(On the off chance you read French, it's originally in that language, and probably better to read that way if you can)

I picked it up for bedtime reading and couldn't put it down. I read the entire thing, into the middle of the night.

Yes, I'm happy on my own. I work at home, I like spending long periods of time on my own without much social interaction (though I'm not against socializing). It's a very oppressive environment with a lot of factors feeding into it. The deprivation of sensory input and things to distract yourself with really kicks you into a weird mental space after a few hours. I was staring at marks on the wall for long periods of time. I would make repetitive movements with my arm, slapping it against my chest, doing that until I got bored and moving onto something else. Having no sense of time, how much time is passing, and not being able to get a break from it, it just becomes a really deep churning that can suck you in like a vortex and you can't really escape it.

As I mentioned in a post on this thread, I was just doing weekends, so it only lasted for 52 hours. It would take a lot of mental fortitude to survive days or weeks (or god forbid, years) of it. It breaks people and they don't just magically get better once their sentence is finished. It's quite horrible.

Perhaps you're confusing simply having your own cell with solitary confinement. The latter implies zero or nearly zero contact with any humans, and seems to have severe psychological effects.

I am sure I did not confuse this. But I did not know that other sensory deprivations such as lack of light/daylight cycle or fresh air are also common for solitary confinement.

I also accept arkades' reaaly good argument that solitary confinement makes you a lot more vulnerable to abuse by officers.

There is good evidence that long term isolation is destructive of most peoples mental wellbeing. The president of Uruguay was remarkably open about the post-release mental burden of his years in solitary (he was a marxist guerilla who was capture and imprisoned for years, before becoming elected in a democratic post-coup society). You argue from the specific (your own belief you would chose to tolerate solitary over all other forms of incarceration) over the general (the body of evidence (no, I don't have a cite) is strong to suggest across cohorts, isolation has long term detrimental effect on health)

Solitary confinement isn't just getting your own room. It means that you don't get to spend any time with any other inmates.

There exist people who voluntarily live in some form of solitary confinement, like hermits and some types of monastic orders - very few though. You may well be one of the edge cases of humanity that would be ok with it. Are you asking if that is possible, or if everyone is like that? Because yes, you could actually be like that, and no, most people aren't like that.

> There exist people who voluntarily live in some form of solitary confinement, like hermits and some types of monastic orders - very few though. You may well be one of the edge cases of humanity that would be ok with it.

It is quite plausible that in a different time I would have lived such a life. Sometimes I think about the question what the analogue of such a life would be in an extremely technology-pervaded science-fiction society (think for example cyberpunk or cypherpunk), e.g. how people can "leave" society without leaving all the technology that comes with it. :-)

> Are you asking if that is possible, or if everyone is like that? Because yes, you could actually be like that, and no, most people aren't like that.

I am asking what the problems are that "normal" people have with such a life. I am talking about the psychological problems. Other posters here have very plausibly explained to me how other circumstances of jails that accompany solitary confinement can plausibly explain lots of psychological problems of solitary confinement. But I still cannot imagine how being alone per se can cause you serious psychological trouble (I would describe this at most as "inconvenient"): As I already wrote this does not contradict that I accept that being alone for such a long problem can easily cause problems for reintegration into society after the jail time.

This is more related to solitary confinement as a a decision you don't have a choice in.

As the article states, 'disciplinary segregation' is a maximum of 30 days, where 'administrative segregation' is left up to warden.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com