Solitary Confinement: What Are the Ethics Behind This Moral Issue?

As a first-generation immigrant born in New York City to a single mother from Uzbekistan, I have gained a significant amount of insight into the interconnection between social class and the daily experiences of a person’s life. My whole life, almost on a daily basis, I have seen how the ever-increasing economic divide between the higher and lower classes has determined their education and employment opportunities. While the majority of the higher classes had, and continue to have, the privilege of not worrying about the next few days, weeks, and even months, lower-class families, including my own, continuously have to worry about our social and economic well-being. 

The main cause of this disparity is quite obvious: our country does not provide low-income communities, predominantly black/brown/Hispanic communities, with enough opportunities that promote their socio-economic well-being. While this may not immediately seem like a troubling issue, this has a lot more impacts than what is seen at first glance. One of the most prominent issues that has derived from the lack of education and job opportunities is the drastic rise in crime and incarceration rates. 

The inherent rise in crime rates, inevitably interconnected with socio-economic statuses, also leads to a rise in incarceration rates.  

This life-long experience and the interconnection of status and crime rates have made my view of the world shift throughout the past two years. I realized that our society tends to neglect others born into poverty, leaving them behind to fend for themselves.

Another issue I have continuously pondered throughout the last two years is the implementation and rise in the use of solitary confinement in our prisons and local jails. Since the late eighteenth century, people have utilized solitary confinement to reduce the threat of violence and uprising among incarcerated people throughout the United States. To this day, some of the biggest prisons, including Rikers Island in New York, still utilize solitary confinement, claiming that it maintains order and peace for prisoners and guards alike. Without a doubt, solitary confinement is beneficial and almost seems too good to be true. Someone is misbehaving? Solitary confinement. Someone threatens a guard? Solitary confinement. It is all too easy. 

However, the impacts of solitary confinement go far beyond the benefits that are only evident before we start looking into the issue with a more detailed, specific vision. Research has shown time and time again how individuals who underwent the process of being chained to a bed in a room alone for twenty hours a day have long-term emotional and physical damage that could’ve been avoided. For example, the BJS report of 20151 has stated that nearly 25% of people in prison and 35% of people in jail who endured solitary confinement faced severe physiological repercussions, including severe depression, panic attacks, and paranoia. In addition, the impacts of solitary confinement are not solely limited to physiological issues. As Dr. Shalev, a licensed criminologist, wrote in A Sourcebook On Solitary Confinement2, solitary confinement causes immense weight loss and sensory deprivation in a short period of time. 

So now we are faced with a question that has immense impacts on both sides. If we choose to abolish solitary confinement, where would all of the violent and threatening people go? If we choose to keep it, how will we face the dire consequences it has on the victims? While I lean more towards abolishing solitary confinement, I understand both sides. I believe that we, as citizens of the United States, need to work together to reduce the need for solitary confinement. If incarcerated people have educational and job opportunities that speak to them in prison, they will have little to no time left to act on their impulses and commit violent acts. Even sending books to prison will spark interest and promote peace among the incarcerated people. 

Dorina Azizova is a rising junior at The Brooklyn Latin School and a Next Gen Summer Civic Fellow. Her interests include political advocacy and civic engagement, and she plans on pursuing a degree in law to become a criminal defense attorney. In her free time, she enjoys playing volleyball and painting.