You’re stuck in a small, bleak room, you haven’t seen your family or friends in forever, and you’re starting to hallucinate. Turns out you’re a solitary confinement prisoner or a victim of psychological torture. Solitary confinement, created in 1826 has been used in the United States ever since its creation. It’s still used today, but at what cost? Inmates are held in a barren 80 square foot room for up to 24 hours a day with little to no human contact which isn’t only boring; it’s inhumane. 80,000 people, some not even major offenders, find themselves in bleak cells on any given day; none of them should be due to the expensive annual costs and mental problems it spawns.
First of all, many studies show that being thrown into “the hole” for …show more content…
For instance, in a study from npr.org, they found that many prisons, especially those in New York, actually had isolation programs costing up to twice the cost of general prisoner programs. Why solitary confinement costs so much? Simply because it costs more to build cells for one person than to build one for several convicts. And who pays for such an expensive punishment? The government pays partly for the cost of isolation, and even though you had nothing to do with the crime, taxpayers like you pay for it as well. That’s right, the expensive punishment isn’t only affecting the people sentenced to it, it’s affecting you and your wallet. Further, the website Solitary Watch did some digging to find that on average a solitary confinement prisoner costs over $26,000 per year. When penitentiaries in the United States use about 51 billion yearly, 2 billion or the amount spent on solitary confinement is actually not a lot until you see that isolation holds only a small percent of prisoners. Only 2 percent of the prison population is held in some sort of segregation, but 4 percent of the lockup budget is used for segregation, the numbers don’t add up. If the system were perfect the two percent of the prison would be in solitary and 2 percent of the budget would be spent on solitary. Not only is the silent killer known as solitary confinement hurting the prisoners, it’s hurting the economy as a
First of all, many studies show that being thrown into “the hole” for …show more content…
For instance, in a study from npr.org, they found that many prisons, especially those in New York, actually had isolation programs costing up to twice the cost of general prisoner programs. Why solitary confinement costs so much? Simply because it costs more to build cells for one person than to build one for several convicts. And who pays for such an expensive punishment? The government pays partly for the cost of isolation, and even though you had nothing to do with the crime, taxpayers like you pay for it as well. That’s right, the expensive punishment isn’t only affecting the people sentenced to it, it’s affecting you and your wallet. Further, the website Solitary Watch did some digging to find that on average a solitary confinement prisoner costs over $26,000 per year. When penitentiaries in the United States use about 51 billion yearly, 2 billion or the amount spent on solitary confinement is actually not a lot until you see that isolation holds only a small percent of prisoners. Only 2 percent of the prison population is held in some sort of segregation, but 4 percent of the lockup budget is used for segregation, the numbers don’t add up. If the system were perfect the two percent of the prison would be in solitary and 2 percent of the budget would be spent on solitary. Not only is the silent killer known as solitary confinement hurting the prisoners, it’s hurting the economy as a