"Photo Requests from Solitary (PRFS) is a participatory project that invites men and women held in long-term solitary confinement in U.S. prisons to request a photograph of anything at all, real or imagined, and then finds a volunteer to make the image. The astonishing range of requests, taken together, provide an archive of the hopes, memories, and interests of people who live in extreme isolation."
> wild, natural countryside in Donegal, Ireland, where my grandparents are from
> Hello- I am writing because I heard about your photo program. I am in Pelican Bay SHU Short Corridor. I’ve been held in isolative conditions for 17 years. The image I would like is of Northern Ireland. Specifically Donegal. Any image of the wild, natural country there in donegal would be cherished. My grandparents and great grandparents are from there. Their stories of the place remain forever entrenched in my imagination and minds eye. I never took the time to seek out images of that far away land but, since being buried in SHU, I have longed to see it. I once had a dream of Donegal in which I was walking, barefoot, across the grass. I could literally feel the cool blades between my toes. As I woke, in my windowless cell, I felt a palpable sense of loss. It felt like I was underwater and drowning. In the waking moment I realized I’d be wading through time for the rest of my life. So, my request to you is for an image or photo of this beautiful land that haunts my dreams. I also want to thank you for your innovation. You’ve given choice to men who have lost the ability to choose. So thank you... With Respect, Patrick
It can serve absolutely no punitive or reformatory purpose. It is of zero value as a means to compensation. Whether it is useful as a deterrent is unclear, but also immaterial.
The only purpose I can imagine is for the public to witness the misfortune of fellow citizens. A modern day public execution.
I am not hopeful that things will get better in the foreseeable future. I can only hope that our children judge us harshly.
Are you sure about that? I had the same reaction but then I starting thinking about all the horrible life-altering things a person could do to earn something like that. The penal system isn't perfect but it's what we have.
I’m not the person you responded to but, yes, I’m sure of it. In what sick alternate reality is an indefinite period of constant torture to be considered a reasonable sentence for anything?
What percentage of people in solitary confinement do you think this describes? In any case, it sounds like your hypothetical prisoner should be in a psych unit.
As soon as you dive into what's offensive or not, you'll start discriminating ideologies and religions as well. Denying this request might be denying that persons religion/ideology, while accepting it, is offensive to others who don't belong to the religion/ideology. Don't think you can win here really.
> As soon as you dive into what's offensive or not, you'll start discriminating ideologies and religions as well.
Isn't that super common in 2020, and has always been very common? We've always judged ideologies and religions, think National Socialism, Stalinism or Scientology. Does the person belonging to that group being in solitary confinement change that?
Calling something out for being offensive here means that I'd like see other opinions. At the very least, I thought it was.
I didn't call to action against this request. I didn't send them a request to take it down, no authorities involved, nothing serious really.
I just found it offensive, and thought it would be interesting for others to see, my expectation was to see interesting takes on the subject.
Not everyone you see on the internet who says they are offended is part of the so-called "cancel culture". I'm surely not. I'd suggest everyone to relax.
I agree with you and send kudos your way for raising the conversation. I have no skin in the game really, and earlier comment is just my side of the coin, love to see others as well. And I echo the idea of everyone to relax. Just because someone is flagging something as potentially offensive doesn't mean they want it removed from the surface of the earth. Plenty of things are offensive but should still be visible/readable.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to suggest that you wanted to cancel anyone. I find it completely normal to take offense and to say so, and I think it speaks for the inability of the HN community to tolerate dissenting opinions that your comment was flagged.
It's pretty gruesome to watch someome go out of their way take casual pot-shots at someone trapped in a torture cell just because the person used wording that isn't the peak of diplomacy. HN has basic standards of human decency; it's not a 100% free speech zone.
Let's not pretend that it would have been flagged if the request was different. HN heavily leans liberal, and Muslim is a protected identity. I don't believe that it would have played out the same if it had been a similar request that suggests it's a white supremacist, but you're free to tell yourself that.
I didn't "take casual pot-shots", I found it interesting that they didn't discriminate against offensive stuff. I'd not want them to, but I expected them to. Have the decency to understand what the other may have been trying to say first, as not all of us are native English speakers. I don't have a problem with that poor person, I have a problem with the idea, yes, but that's irrelevant to this discussion.
> Isn't that super common in 2020, and has always been very common
I think it depends on your location really. In some places, and in the right environment, you can be a proclaimed communist and have a normal conversation with someone who is a proclaimed nazi. It's usually tough and with some heated arguments, but it is indeed possible.
From the outside though, I think the people in the US have lost that ability, which you are now seeing the effect of.
I'm not from the US and I'm very confused about how strong the reactions are. I certainly wasn't trying to start a revolt against a random poor guy here.
It may be shocking to people but I judge people according to what they do and say. They judge me too. We don't try to "cancel" each other. I'm an immigrant living in Germany, coming from a Muslim family, and I've been to the stands of AfD, and I judged them, yes, because what they are trying to accomplish is offending to me. I didn't call the police, no. Not because they'd laugh me off anyways, I'd not try silencing them even if I had power to do so.
> It's usually tough and with some heated arguments, but it is indeed possible.
Sure, but both the Communist and the Nazi will judge each other's ideology, and very openly tell them apart from "the rest" of possible ideologies. A catholic from one catholic sect will usually have fewer issues with somebody from another catholic sect or even a protestant, than a pagan.
I don't think there is a place or point in time where everybody is essentially saying "that's your opinion, okay, whatever" with regards to ideologies and religions that aren't their own. Whether that discrimination will lead to oppression and violence is another issue, but surely everyone has an opinion on whether something is (factually and/or morally) wrong or right, and when they feel safe enough, they will say so.
I agree with your perception that it seems to have become harder to tolerate people of different convictions, though I don't think the US is unique in that way, it's just more in the open there, and their much more pronounced idea of freedom of speech and fewer labor laws make it easier to "cancel" someone, which in turn makes increases the frequency of it being tried.
It feels like a wealth thing. The poor in any society have larger problems than policing each others thoughts, and the better-off use it to play social power games.
I read your comment the first time as "Hey, I saw this, this is what I thought about it, how does others feel?", wanting to open up a conversation without any predefined conclusion of "this is absolutely fine" or "this should be banned".
But nuance is famously hard on the internet, and many tend to extrapolate what they think you mean. Generally, more users of HN would do HN an service overall by trying to follow the "Have curious conversation" guideline more, but again, hard when you want to prove someone wrong.
It's easy for me to imagine that a person trapped for years in an isolation-torture cell would have some complicated and slightly un-PC thoughts regarding religion and male-female relationships.
That request is 0.01x as offensive as much common HN chatter, and 0.0000001x as offensive as what is being done to the imprisoned person requesting it, so I really see no value in your calling negative attention to it, and I invite you to broaden your worldview.
I think egeozcan suggested something was offensive earlier, but their post was flagged, I guess if you're interested enough I believe you can change your settings to view flagged content.
on edit: I see egeozcan confirmed it was their post that was calling something out as offensive.
on second edit: changed his to their as I don't actually know egeozcan's gender.
Solitary is one of the worst things we do to other human beings. Humans are social creatures, and despite these people's transgressions, how this isn't considered cruel and unusual punishment and unconstitutional is completely baffling to me. I understand the desire to use solitary as a control mechanism and an escalation threat against inmates, but for people to be held in these conditions for _years_ baffles me that anyone could think that's acceptable.
> I’ve been held in isolative conditions for 17 years
How can this be legal, beneficial for anyone or even possible for other humans to execute on? One would think that prisons should at least pretend to try to make people better than just isolating them until they die. And if not that, one would think that prisons would make a cost/benefit analysis and find out that people generally get more twisted from spending long time in isolation.
And if neither of those two are applied, one would think that someone along the chain would see "17 years of isolation" and act to fix that or refuse the order of continue to lock them up.
The prison world is truly fucked up, and it's not because of the prisoners.
On any given day, at least 80,000 people are held in solitary in the United States prisons and jails, either in supermax or other segregation units. Some will remain for months, years, or even decades in conditions that have been shown to cause deep and lasting psychological and physiological harm.
What the fuckity fuck - how is this allowed to happen, in 2020, in a democracy, in a rich/western country? Especially one that loves to preach values of freedom/democracy/equality etc to other countries around the world? This is awful
I had a recent discussion with friends on how difficult prison must be. We had a lockdown in Ireland but you were allowed to go up to 5KM from your home for exercise once a day(not really enforced) and you could watch TV, cook, sleep, do hobbies at your leisure and people found it really tough. Hopefully people might be more sympathetic to the incarcerated and we can focus on rehabilitation and not punishment.
The first step is always the most difficult. It's easy to me (living in a different country) to say what Americans should do to no longer allow such cruelty (and many others) to be carried in their name. My suggestion: find others who also find this unacceptable and make a plan. Run for office, get elected, find others that can educate more people. Each individual initiative has a very low chance of success, but if enough people try, some will succeed.
This is depressingly characteristic of the US. Like here fill this form to get a picture of anything you want! But no we'll still keep you in solitary confinement for decades :)
Akin to all the "happy" stories of people coming together to donate to someone's GoFundMe campaign for medical bills.
> I was arrested when I was 17 years old, and I have been in prison for over 30 yrs.; 20 yrs. of that was spent in solitary confinement, 90% of which I did in the windowless cells of Pelican Bay State Prison.
This is beyond fucked up. Arrested as a teenager, they've now spent more time alone in a windowless concrete cell than they did growing up. There's no information on what they did to warrant this, but there's a reason even murder sentences are (usually) less than 10 years in most European countries.
Yeah, I can't figure out a single reason this would be OK. Even murders, rapists and other morally shitty people either deserve to get help to improve themselves, as they are obviously damaged in some way, or at least put in a place where they don't get worse.
I'm not generally for death sentence, but I'd honestly change my view if the alternative to death sentence is being locked up in solitary for the rest of your life. Death in this case would be kinder. Best would be that none of those options exists.
There is no animal species more savage than humans. Orcas, great cats... nothing comes close to our innovation in torture methods, deliberately hacking evolved pain mechanisms to maximize suffering. Solitary confinement is a particularly ingenious way of inflicting agony.
I find it hilarious how evil naive this forum is. Read some court documents on torture cases sometime, or even just read crime and deterrence literature.
I've read plenty of court cases and I'm still of the same opinion. Those people who commit those things are corrupted in some way, and need help. If your point is that they will never get better, the most human thing to do would be to execute them, rather than putting them in solitary. If there is a chance we can "fix" them, then I think we should aim for fixing them.
> 20 yrs. of that was spent in solitary confinement
Solitary confinement is pure torture, I can't even imagine how it would be to spend 20 years under those dreadful circumstances. I generally love lots of things about the US (never been there, I must admit) but I find their incarceration policies scandalous.
This might sound like a naive question, but what is the driver behind this? Economic factors? Is it cheaper to keep people in smaller spaces, in privately-owned prisons? I am genuinely curious why we hear so much about solitary confinement in American prisons specifically.
it is a mistake to think that this happens due to a singular driving factor.
In fact, such situation happens due to a large compounded number of "it's not my problem" and a lack of incentives to actually care.
So I'm saying this is not caused by some insitutional entity doing something, but rather, by many of them not doing certain things (usually to reduce cost).
Thanks, let me rephrase: what are the systemic issues in American prison system that make solitary confinement such a common practice? What are the drivers behind this?
My understanding is that some of the reasons might include:
- a privatised prison system
- systemic racism
- the % of US citizens in prisons being relatively high compared to the rest of what we call developed countries
Obv. all of these are intertwined and it’s a very complex issue.
I’m still struggling to understand how people in an advanced democracy like the US would allow for these things to happen. It seems like it’s considered the norm.
It not cheaper. Prisons are part of the expanded military-indistrial complex, where the goal is to spend more money for the same results so that more can be skimmed off for corruption. US prisons are the great-grandchildren of slave plantations, with broadly similar motivations.
This is amazing. I have been interacting with folks like this for a long time, in some of my extracurricular activities.
I will say that it's easy for us to be sympathetic, when we see their "human" side, but that sympathy dries up, real quick, when we are victims.
I have worked with both perpetrators and victims (often, the same person).
It's pretty heart-wrenching. There's no practical solutions on the table. It's pretty difficult to get folks behind efforts to reform things.
In the US, a felony rap is a "scarlet letter" that follows people throughout their entire life, destroying any real chance at true reform. Pretty much guaranteed recidivism. Dishonorable military discharges are another one.
I have heard that the UK has a system that "shelves" criminal records after a certain number of years, and only employment in certain fields (like law enforcement, childcare, etc.) can view the records.
>I have heard that the UK has a system that "shelves" criminal records after a certain number of years, and only employment in certain fields (like law enforcement, childcare, etc.) can view the records.
This is true but it depends on how long the sentence was as after a 4 year sentence you always have to tell an employer about the conviction. It's better than nothing as petty crime shouldn't have serious long term employment consequences but it seems like it doesn't do much for the people that might need it most.
It does seem to be more liberal than the US. I suspect that the vast majority of offenders in either nation spend less than 4 years in jail, so that's not a bad thing.
I wonder if offenses committed before the rehab period is over are added to previous periods, or if the "clock is reset."
In the US, we also have the "3-time loser" sentencing in many states, which can make a third conviction into a life sentence.
For all the empathetic discussion here, it’s important to keep some perspective - in many cases, these prisoners are in solitary because they have repeatedly attacked other inmates or guards, maiming or killing them. Of course they are still human and deserving of human consideration, but it’s not like they end up in solitary for not writing enough unit tests or saying the wrong thing on Slack...
So here are some snippets from the first page of results of typing "reasons to be in solitary" into DuckDuckGo.
"There are a range of reasons someone can be placed in solitary confinement, including in response to violence or other serious security threats. However, the Vera Institute’s Segregation Reduction Project found 85 percent of prisoners were sent to disciplinary segregation for minor rule infractions in Illinois. Common violations included being out of place, failing to report to an assignment, and refusing an order." - https://www.prisonfellowship.org/resources/advocacy/conditio...
"Inmates have been sentenced to solitary for infractions such as refusing to cut their hair for religious reasons, or eating an apple incorrectly, which shows how broadly the offenses officially punishable with solitary confinement can be interpreted. The list of such offenses includes:
possessing any locking devices, including keys;
failure to make the bed in military fashion;
adulterating food;
demonstrating martial arts;
tattooing;
circumventing mail monitoring procedures;
indecent exposure;
misuse of authorized medications;
refusing work;
failing to perform work as instructed by a supervisor;
insolence towards a staff member;
unauthorized contact with the public;
being untidy;
circulating a petition;
feigning illness;
using abusive or offensive language.
Other reported common causes of solitary confinement are:
Possession of five dollars or more without authorization;
participation in a strike;
attempted suicide;
failure to obey an order properly;
“reckless eyeballing”;
failure to return an ashtray;
possession of an excess quantity of postage stamps."
"Contrary to popular belief, solitary confinement is not reserved only for the most dangerous prisoners. Often it is imposed to isolate detainees during the pre-trial stage of investigation, including as part of coercive interrogation. Solitary confinement for pre-trial detainees has, for example, been part of Scandinavian prison practice for many years. It is also used to lock away prisoners with – or who are perceived to have – mental illnesses." -https://www.penalreform.org/issues/prison-conditions/key-fac...
> In general, people are sent to solitary not by a judge or jury, but solely at the discretion of prison staff. In many prisons and jails, solitary confinement has become a control strategy of first resort, although it has never been proven to reduce prison violence.
> Incarcerated men and women can be placed in complete isolation for months or years not only for violent acts, but for possessing contraband (including too many pencils or postage stamps), testing positive for drug use, ignoring orders, or using profanity. In some states, anyone who is believed to belong to a prison gang can be placed in solitary indefinitely. Other people end up in solitary because they have untreated mental illnesses, are children in need of “protection,” are LGBTQ, are people of color, are Muslim, have unpopular political beliefs, or report rape or abuse by prison officials.
I was in solitary for 3 months this year. Not even criminal, a contempt charge by a retaliatory judge for reporting him to the Iowa Judicial Qualifications Commission. My ex wife had her assistant go to the jail and talk to a drug dealer ... hours later I was viciously attacked and asked for protective custody. Spent my days monastic reading a lot and working out. Happy to answer questions.
82 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] thread> wild, natural countryside in Donegal, Ireland, where my grandparents are from
> Hello- I am writing because I heard about your photo program. I am in Pelican Bay SHU Short Corridor. I’ve been held in isolative conditions for 17 years. The image I would like is of Northern Ireland. Specifically Donegal. Any image of the wild, natural country there in donegal would be cherished. My grandparents and great grandparents are from there. Their stories of the place remain forever entrenched in my imagination and minds eye. I never took the time to seek out images of that far away land but, since being buried in SHU, I have longed to see it. I once had a dream of Donegal in which I was walking, barefoot, across the grass. I could literally feel the cool blades between my toes. As I woke, in my windowless cell, I felt a palpable sense of loss. It felt like I was underwater and drowning. In the waking moment I realized I’d be wading through time for the rest of my life. So, my request to you is for an image or photo of this beautiful land that haunts my dreams. I also want to thank you for your innovation. You’ve given choice to men who have lost the ability to choose. So thank you... With Respect, Patrick
http://photorequestsfromsolitary.org/84-2/
(Click "View All" at the top right to see the responses.)
Doesn’t the govt have a duty to protect other inmates?
It can serve absolutely no punitive or reformatory purpose. It is of zero value as a means to compensation. Whether it is useful as a deterrent is unclear, but also immaterial.
The only purpose I can imagine is for the public to witness the misfortune of fellow citizens. A modern day public execution.
I am not hopeful that things will get better in the foreseeable future. I can only hope that our children judge us harshly.
17 years in isolation.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/07/17/california-pri...
I mean, of course, this is a personal wish, and people are free to believe whatever they want. It just felt weird and wanted to mention.
Isn't that super common in 2020, and has always been very common? We've always judged ideologies and religions, think National Socialism, Stalinism or Scientology. Does the person belonging to that group being in solitary confinement change that?
I didn't call to action against this request. I didn't send them a request to take it down, no authorities involved, nothing serious really.
I just found it offensive, and thought it would be interesting for others to see, my expectation was to see interesting takes on the subject.
Not everyone you see on the internet who says they are offended is part of the so-called "cancel culture". I'm surely not. I'd suggest everyone to relax.
I think it depends on your location really. In some places, and in the right environment, you can be a proclaimed communist and have a normal conversation with someone who is a proclaimed nazi. It's usually tough and with some heated arguments, but it is indeed possible.
From the outside though, I think the people in the US have lost that ability, which you are now seeing the effect of.
It may be shocking to people but I judge people according to what they do and say. They judge me too. We don't try to "cancel" each other. I'm an immigrant living in Germany, coming from a Muslim family, and I've been to the stands of AfD, and I judged them, yes, because what they are trying to accomplish is offending to me. I didn't call the police, no. Not because they'd laugh me off anyways, I'd not try silencing them even if I had power to do so.
Sure, but both the Communist and the Nazi will judge each other's ideology, and very openly tell them apart from "the rest" of possible ideologies. A catholic from one catholic sect will usually have fewer issues with somebody from another catholic sect or even a protestant, than a pagan.
I don't think there is a place or point in time where everybody is essentially saying "that's your opinion, okay, whatever" with regards to ideologies and religions that aren't their own. Whether that discrimination will lead to oppression and violence is another issue, but surely everyone has an opinion on whether something is (factually and/or morally) wrong or right, and when they feel safe enough, they will say so.
I agree with your perception that it seems to have become harder to tolerate people of different convictions, though I don't think the US is unique in that way, it's just more in the open there, and their much more pronounced idea of freedom of speech and fewer labor laws make it easier to "cancel" someone, which in turn makes increases the frequency of it being tried.
It feels like a wealth thing. The poor in any society have larger problems than policing each others thoughts, and the better-off use it to play social power games.
Admittedly, "I found it weird" doesn't communicate that, as I'm now reading my own comment.
But nuance is famously hard on the internet, and many tend to extrapolate what they think you mean. Generally, more users of HN would do HN an service overall by trying to follow the "Have curious conversation" guideline more, but again, hard when you want to prove someone wrong.
That request is 0.01x as offensive as much common HN chatter, and 0.0000001x as offensive as what is being done to the imprisoned person requesting it, so I really see no value in your calling negative attention to it, and I invite you to broaden your worldview.
on edit: I see egeozcan confirmed it was their post that was calling something out as offensive.
on second edit: changed his to their as I don't actually know egeozcan's gender.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> I’ve been held in isolative conditions for 17 years
How can this be legal, beneficial for anyone or even possible for other humans to execute on? One would think that prisons should at least pretend to try to make people better than just isolating them until they die. And if not that, one would think that prisons would make a cost/benefit analysis and find out that people generally get more twisted from spending long time in isolation.
And if neither of those two are applied, one would think that someone along the chain would see "17 years of isolation" and act to fix that or refuse the order of continue to lock them up.
The prison world is truly fucked up, and it's not because of the prisoners.
"volunteers fighting to end solitary confinement, with symbols of freedom"
http://photorequestsfromsolitary.org/123-2/
What the fuckity fuck - how is this allowed to happen, in 2020, in a democracy, in a rich/western country? Especially one that loves to preach values of freedom/democracy/equality etc to other countries around the world? This is awful
But the US has built some massively harmful institutions and a way for folks to hide themselves from much guilt.
“America is a third world country with a gucci belt”
let us pray we wake up to the conditions we subject our fellow beings.
we suffer from historical amnesia.
our nation state is predicated on unspeakable catastrophies rendered unto indigenous peoples.
there are myriad realities we have yet to face and reconcile.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Passive voice is the self-answer.
Akin to all the "happy" stories of people coming together to donate to someone's GoFundMe campaign for medical bills.
See http://photorequestsfromsolitary.org/information
This is beyond fucked up. Arrested as a teenager, they've now spent more time alone in a windowless concrete cell than they did growing up. There's no information on what they did to warrant this, but there's a reason even murder sentences are (usually) less than 10 years in most European countries.
I'm not generally for death sentence, but I'd honestly change my view if the alternative to death sentence is being locked up in solitary for the rest of your life. Death in this case would be kinder. Best would be that none of those options exists.
I've read plenty of court cases and I'm still of the same opinion. Those people who commit those things are corrupted in some way, and need help. If your point is that they will never get better, the most human thing to do would be to execute them, rather than putting them in solitary. If there is a chance we can "fix" them, then I think we should aim for fixing them.
Solitary confinement is pure torture, I can't even imagine how it would be to spend 20 years under those dreadful circumstances. I generally love lots of things about the US (never been there, I must admit) but I find their incarceration policies scandalous.
So I'm saying this is not caused by some insitutional entity doing something, but rather, by many of them not doing certain things (usually to reduce cost).
My understanding is that some of the reasons might include:
- a privatised prison system - systemic racism - the % of US citizens in prisons being relatively high compared to the rest of what we call developed countries
Obv. all of these are intertwined and it’s a very complex issue.
I’m still struggling to understand how people in an advanced democracy like the US would allow for these things to happen. It seems like it’s considered the norm.
I will say that it's easy for us to be sympathetic, when we see their "human" side, but that sympathy dries up, real quick, when we are victims.
I have worked with both perpetrators and victims (often, the same person).
It's pretty heart-wrenching. There's no practical solutions on the table. It's pretty difficult to get folks behind efforts to reform things.
In the US, a felony rap is a "scarlet letter" that follows people throughout their entire life, destroying any real chance at true reform. Pretty much guaranteed recidivism. Dishonorable military discharges are another one.
I have heard that the UK has a system that "shelves" criminal records after a certain number of years, and only employment in certain fields (like law enforcement, childcare, etc.) can view the records.
This is true but it depends on how long the sentence was as after a 4 year sentence you always have to tell an employer about the conviction. It's better than nothing as petty crime shouldn't have serious long term employment consequences but it seems like it doesn't do much for the people that might need it most.
https://www.gov.uk/exoffenders-and-employment
It does seem to be more liberal than the US. I suspect that the vast majority of offenders in either nation spend less than 4 years in jail, so that's not a bad thing.
I wonder if offenses committed before the rehab period is over are added to previous periods, or if the "clock is reset."
In the US, we also have the "3-time loser" sentencing in many states, which can make a third conviction into a life sentence.
"There are a range of reasons someone can be placed in solitary confinement, including in response to violence or other serious security threats. However, the Vera Institute’s Segregation Reduction Project found 85 percent of prisoners were sent to disciplinary segregation for minor rule infractions in Illinois. Common violations included being out of place, failing to report to an assignment, and refusing an order." - https://www.prisonfellowship.org/resources/advocacy/conditio...
"Inmates have been sentenced to solitary for infractions such as refusing to cut their hair for religious reasons, or eating an apple incorrectly, which shows how broadly the offenses officially punishable with solitary confinement can be interpreted. The list of such offenses includes:
possessing any locking devices, including keys; failure to make the bed in military fashion; adulterating food; demonstrating martial arts; tattooing; circumventing mail monitoring procedures; indecent exposure; misuse of authorized medications; refusing work; failing to perform work as instructed by a supervisor; insolence towards a staff member; unauthorized contact with the public; being untidy; circulating a petition; feigning illness; using abusive or offensive language. Other reported common causes of solitary confinement are:
Possession of five dollars or more without authorization; participation in a strike; attempted suicide; failure to obey an order properly; “reckless eyeballing”; failure to return an ashtray; possession of an excess quantity of postage stamps."
- https://qz.com/480015/these-are-some-of-the-reasons-us-priso...
"Contrary to popular belief, solitary confinement is not reserved only for the most dangerous prisoners. Often it is imposed to isolate detainees during the pre-trial stage of investigation, including as part of coercive interrogation. Solitary confinement for pre-trial detainees has, for example, been part of Scandinavian prison practice for many years. It is also used to lock away prisoners with – or who are perceived to have – mental illnesses." -https://www.penalreform.org/issues/prison-conditions/key-fac...
> In general, people are sent to solitary not by a judge or jury, but solely at the discretion of prison staff. In many prisons and jails, solitary confinement has become a control strategy of first resort, although it has never been proven to reduce prison violence.
> Incarcerated men and women can be placed in complete isolation for months or years not only for violent acts, but for possessing contraband (including too many pencils or postage stamps), testing positive for drug use, ignoring orders, or using profanity. In some states, anyone who is believed to belong to a prison gang can be placed in solitary indefinitely. Other people end up in solitary because they have untreated mental illnesses, are children in need of “protection,” are LGBTQ, are people of color, are Muslim, have unpopular political beliefs, or report rape or abuse by prison officials.