Kalief Browder: A Brief Summary Confinement Analysis

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In the article Bennett receives a quote from an inmate from Pelican Bay on his experience in solitary confinement. He stated that it “is like being locked in the trunk of a car with just enough weather stripping removed so you an breath, and with enough food and water stuffed in everyday inside so that you can physically survive.” (Bennett, 2016, p.298) When being always confined with no personal interactions, there is only so much the emotional and mental body can take. Stories like Kalief Browder where confinement changes their person as a whole; are the reasons why critics see solitary confinement as being a violation of the Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment). As prisoners are confined for extended periods of time it diminishes …show more content…
Even when confinement is used as a protector it can still be more detrimental than being out in general population. The box that you are confined in can lead a person to commit suicide. (Suicides in solitary confine statistics.) Documentaries like Time: The Kalief Browder Story and issues on Frontline show how the corruption of guards, the screams of inmates, the psychotic breaks of people, and how the brain changes from those conditions. It is descried that the longer an individual is there and their mind changes it comes a hard to deal with no matter the age. Feelings of determination and self-knowing diminish and psychological distress increase. Elongated time becomes obsession, rage, and frustration of not knowing when you will be able to be released. That obsession eats away at a person. The psychiatric symptoms that result from extended periods of an isolated environment of confinement are so prevalent that psychiatrist created a name for it: "Reduced Environmental Stimuli" (RES). Symptoms according to an article were "hypersensitivity to external stimuli, perceptual distortions, illusions and hallucinations, panic attacks, difficulties in thinking, concentration, and memory, 'intrusive obsessional

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