Solitary Confinement Should Be Banned

Introduction The main purpose of solitary confinement is to isolate a prisoner in a separate cell as a punishment. When an inmate is sent to solitary confinement there is no doubt that their mental health is affected. The reason I chose this topic is because for many years, solitary confinement has been and continues to be a controversial topic. A common mistake that is often made with the term juvenile is that inmates under the age of 18 are automatically tried as juveniles. Let’s take for example New York, while a person must be 18 to be legal, there can and is inmates under the age of 18 that have been tried and convicted as adults. The truth is that under New York State Penal law most that are under the age of 16 and are tried as adults are still treated as juveniles while other inmates that are over the age of 16 and charged as adults are not treated as juveniles. While some have agreed that solitary confinement is beneficial, others disagree and believe it should not be used. The purpose of this paper is to be able to answer the following questions: Are there benefits from using solitary confinement? If so what are they? Are there negatives outcomes attributed to solitary confinement? If so what are they? Should solitary confinement be banned? If so should it be banned for all inmates or just juveniles? Am I against or for …show more content…
For starters, if a person is put in solitary confinement it could be for their own safety so that others do not harm them. A dangerous inmate can also be put in solitary confinement and by doing so it can prevent them from communicating with others to cause harm. Solitary confinement can also be used as a way to discipline an inmate. A correction officer is not suppose to abuse an inmate because that would be cruel and unusual punishment which is why they need inmates to fear something, because it will make them respect the correctional officers and behave