Prolonged Isolation of Prisoners
No date
Human Rights Watch

EXTRACT:

The norms requiring medical oversight are well-founded, in light of the risks posed by prolonged isolation to the prisoner’s mental and physical health. The European Commission for Human Rights, an organ of the Council of Europe later absorbed into the European Court of Human Rights, stated, "The international literature on criminology and psychology indicate that isolation can be sufficient in itself gravely to impair physical and mental health. The following conditions may be diagnosed: chronic apathy, fatigue, emotional instability, difficulties of concentration, and diminution of mental faculties."

Criminologist Hans Toch observes, “unmitigated isolation is indisputably stressful, and it reliably overtaxes the resilience of many incarcerated offenders.”

Psychologist Craig Haney notes: "Empirical research on solitary…confinement has consistently and unequivocally documented the harmful consequences of living in these kinds of environments …. Evidence of these negative psychological effects comes from personal accounts, descriptive studies, and systematic research…conducted over a period of four decades, by researchers from several different continents…"

An American federal judge has ruled that prolonged solitary confinement “may press the outer bounds of what most humans can psychologically tolerate.” Even if they have no prior history of mental illness, prisoners subjected to prolonged isolation may experience depression, despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations, problems with impulse control, and/or an impaired ability to think, concentrate, or remember.

A statement by Dr. Stuart Grassian submitted to the court in a 1995 case brought by prisoners against officials at Pelican Bay Prison in California, the United States, asserted, "Solitary and small group confinement can cause severe psychiatric harm in the form of a specific syndrome that has been reported by many clinicians in a variety of settings.”