Scientific studies of solitary confinement and its damages have actually come in waves, first
emerging in the mid-19th century,
when the practice fell from widespread favor in the United States and
Europe. More study came in the 1950s, as a response to reports of
prisoner isolation and brainwashing during the Korean War. The renewed
popularity of solitary confinement in the United States, which dates to
the prison overcrowding and rehabilitation program cuts of the 1980s,
spurred the most recent research.
Consistent
patterns emerge, centering around the aforementioned extreme anxiety,
anger, hallucinations, mood swings and flatness, and loss of impulse
control. In the absence of stimuli, prisoners may also become
hypersensitive to any stimuli at all. Often they obsess uncontrollably,
as if their minds didn’t belong to them, over tiny details or personal
grievances. Panic attacks are routine, as is depression and loss of
memory and cognitive function.
When
prisoners leave solitary confinement and re-enter society — something
that often happens with no transition period — their symptoms might
abate, but they’re unable to adjust. “I’ve called this the decimation of
life skills,” said Kupers. “It destroys one’s capacity to relate
socially, to work, to play, to hold a job or enjoy life.”...
Explaining
why isolation is so damaging is complicated, but can be distilled to
basic human needs for social interaction and sensory stimulation, along
with a lack of the social reinforcement that prevents everyday concerns
from snowballing into pychoses, said Kupers.
He
likened the symptoms seen in solitary prisoners to those seen in
soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The conditions
are similar, and it’s known from studies of soldiers that chronic,
severe stress alters pathways in the brain.
Brain
imaging studies of prisoners are lacking, though, given the logistical
difficulties of conducting them in high-security conditions.
Such
studies are arguably not needed, as the symptoms of solitary
confinement are so well-described, but could add a degree of
neurobiological specificity to the discussion.
“What
you get from a brain scan is the ability to point to something”
concrete, said law professor Amanda Pustilnik of the University of
Maryland, who specializes in the intersection of neuroscience and the
legal system. “The credibility of psychology in the public mind is very
low, whereas the credibility of our newest set of brain tools is very
high.”
Brain
imaging might also convey the damages of solitary confinement in a more
compelling way. “There are few people who say that mental distress is
impermissible in punishment. But we do think harming people physically
is impermissible,” Pustilnik said.
“You
can’t starve people. You can’t put them into a hotbox or maim them,”
she continued. “If you could do brain scans to show that people suffer
permanent damage, that could make solitary look less like some form of
distress, and more like the infliction of a permanent disfigurement.”
A comprehensive new article by Brandon Keim in Wired Science is titled "The Horrible Psychology of Solitary Confinement."
Keim does an excellent job of summing up the research on the
psychological effects of solitary. He also points to the realative lack
of cutting-edge neuroscientific research on the subject, which might
show the physical effects isolation has on the brain. (We wrote about one such study here.) An excerpt follows, but the article is well worth reading in full.
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