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Jennifer Salerno
Dr. Charles Chaves
PHL 103 – Providence Spring 2015
29 March 2015
Ethics of Incarceration: Morality in a Place Enclosed by Razor Wire
Assault in the United States is easily understood as a violent crime. A common assault
can put a person in jail for six months. An assault occasioning actual bodily harm can have a
person incarcerated for up to five years. However, assault on prisoners is an everyday ordeal.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, every month since January of 2011, 170-290 per
every 5000 inmates were “less seriously assaulted”, while 10-110 per every 5000 were seriously
assaulted “involving serious physical injury or threat of serious injury” (Federal Bureau of
Prisons). These statistics are unknown to many and unacknowledged by even more. Especially
in “the Land of the Free”, one would believe that the places where people are sent for breaking
the law, would be held to higher or at least the same moral standard as the people sentenced
there. Prison is a place where the mind, body, and soul is broken everyday of a person’s
sentence. The cruelties behind and beyond the bars are something joked about on shows, in
movies and books, and everywhere else in the media. By taking something incredibly serious so
lightly, ethics in prison has been lost. United States’ incarceration exemplifies a justice system
without justice.
Of the world’s total prison population, that approaches nine million, approximately half
of the detainees are prisoners of the United States, China, and Russia. China and Russia are not
the kind of countries the United States enjoys being grouped with, especially when we are the
worst of the group. In 2005 BBC News reported statistics of the known incarceration rates and
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populations. The United States at the time had a prison population of 2,193,798 with 737 people
in jail out of every 100,000. China had almost a million less prisoners at 1,548,498 even with
their total citizen population at 1.3 billion at the time, therefore, their actual rate of incarceration
was only 118 out of every 100,000 people. Russia is closer to the U.S.’s rate with 615 out of
every 100,000, but only had 874,161 prisoners at the time. These statistics are important because
they have not altered much since 2005. The United States of America is the Land of the Free, but
according to statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2013 1 in 110 American adults
were incarcerated and about 1 in 51 adults were on probation/parole.
Not only is the amount of people in prison in the United States horrifying, but the
reasoning for imprisonment would shock the majority of people. When a person thinks of a
crime, most probably think of the violent crimes. However, the data reported by the Bureau of
Justice Statistics in 2012 on federal arrestees show only 3,528 people or 2.1% of suspects
arrested were arrested for violent crimes. On the other hand, 25,929 people (15.1%) were
arrested for drug offenses, 11,193 people (6.5%) were arrested for fraud, 21,690 people (12.7%)
were arrested for supervision (probation/parole) violations, and 85,458 people (49.9%) were
arrested for immigration offenses. Degrees of murder sentences had a 93.0% incarceration rate,
7.0% parole only rate, and 1.0% fine only. Drug offenses at the same token had a 90.5%
incarceration rate, 4.8% parole only, and 0.3% fine only. The fact that drug offenses (illegal) and
murder (illegal, immoral, and easily argued the worst thing a person could do) have similar rates
shows how skewed the justice system is.
Once in a prison there are many aspects that can be analyzed in terms of being immoral
including overcrowding, racism, lack of/cuts in health care (including mental health), forcefeedings, intimidation and assault. However, most controversial and most unethical would
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probably be the concept of solitary confinement and in turn “supermax” prisons. Solitary
confinement is when a prisoner is placed in isolated conditions with a lack of or no interactions
with other people or environmental stimuli for 22-24 hours a day. People believe that the only
people that are put in solitary confinement are the most dangerous and violent inmates, however,
evidence has proven that that is not the case. Instead almost a third of the people who end up in
solitary confinement are mentally ill or cognitively impaired, and the confinement only worsens
the mental state. One survivor of solitary confinement without any known mental problems
described her experience as such, “My mind began to slip. I suffered from insomnia, nightmares,
hallucinations, and emotional detachment, and often had violent panic attacks. More than once, I
completely lost control and began screaming and beating at the walls of my cell until my
knuckles bled. I started to realize that there was a slow disintegration, really, of my personality,
my sense of who I was (ACLU)”.
Ethically, it is hard to imagine how people can be placed in isolation when it is known
how it can deteriorate the mind in such a manner. Especially, when it is understood that besides
the mentally ill and cognitively impaired others that are put in solitary tend to be “nuisance
prisoners”, people who have either had a small infraction, stood up for their rights, and/or
annoyed the staff. It is purely out of convenience for prison employees that most inmates are put
into solitary confinement. However, in the long run solitary can be more of an inconvenience due
to the fact that research shows less solitary confinement results in less violence in prison. Greatly
due to the necessity of social interaction for social skills. “The pervasive use of solitary
confinement means that thousands of prisoners, many of them with severe mental illness, return
to their communities after months or years in isolation, emerging with diminished social and life
skills (ACLU)”.
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As a result of the proven psychological harm solitary confinement puts on inmates there
has been a large amount of related challenges on the Eighth Amendment. With no
physical/biological needs being deprived there has not been much success fighting this practice.
“Substantial psychological and neuroscientific research shows that the deprivation of social
interaction results in grave harm, but that harm is mental, not physical — meaning social
interaction would be a “mental need” — and this difference has proven largely insurmountable
(The Harvard Law Review)”.
The existence of super maximum security prisons is possible because of the acceptance
of solitary confinement. The super maximum security prison in the United States, the
Administrative Maximum facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, is where prisoners are sent to be
kept as isolated and secured as possible. It is known to house around 400 prisoners, all of which
are kept in a cell of 3.5m x 2m (7ft x 12ft). One prisoner explained that they were the focus of
24-hour surveillance, in their cell for 23 hours a day, ate and exercised alone. Everything in their
room is concrete or steel and securely fixed to the ground and walls. A narrow window is in the
room to allow view of the sky but nothing else to prevent inmates from having any idea where
they are. They have a shower that is kept on a timer, and toilet both of which have security
features that prevent flooding. A stool, desk, sink and water fountain also exist in the rooms. “It's
immaculate. It's no black hole. It's not your typical sense of the hole of solitary confinement. You
are staring upon nothingness: Concrete all the time. The architecture itself is the form of the
torture (Clare and Nasaw)”.
Conclusively, it should be obvious to all that the judicial system is in need of some
tweaking. The flaws in America’s prisons are serious and pose threats to human well-being. It is
inhumane and immoral to keep a system the same when it harms and disadvantages such a large
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amount of United States citizens. Psychological harm needs to be understood because the
workings of the mind run far deeper than the scars on someone’s skin. When someone is broken
mentally it impacts every aspect of their life and every single person that comes in contact with
them. To make prisons better places is not just ethically right, but it is in the best interest of
everyone in the United States.
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Works Cited
"ACLU Briefing Paper: The Dangerous Overuse of Solitary Confinement in the United States."
ACLU (n.d.): n. pag. ACLU Foundation, Aug. 2014. Web. 26 Mar. 2015.
Clare, Sean, and Daniel Nasaw. "Just How Bad Are American 'supermax' Prisons?" BBC News.
N.p., 10 Apr. 2012. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
"Federal Bureau of Prisons." BOP Statistics: Inmate Prison Safety. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar.
2015.
Motivans, Mark. Federal Justice Statistics 2012 - Statistical Tables (n.d.): n. pag. Bureau of
Justice Statistics. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jan. 2015. Web. 28 Mar. 2015.
"THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CRUELTY: RECOGNIZING GRAVE MENTAL HARM IN
AMERICAN PRISONS." The Harvard Law Review (n.d.): n. pag. The Harvard Law
Review Association. Web.
"World Prison Populations." BBC News. BBC, 20 June 2005. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.