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The Effects of Solitary Confinement
The full effects of placing prisoners in solitary confinement for long
periods of time are not easily understood. Indeed, in this area many of
our normal methodologies for assessing effects on behaviour fall to the
ground. Since very few of us have ever been placed in a situation remotely
analogous to that in which prisoners in solitary confinement find themselves,
we cannot use the valuable lessons of our own experience. If we turn to
science we find -and I will elaborate on this later -that 'there are few
reports in the scientific literature on sensory deprivation among prisoners.
Most of the studies that are available have used volunteer subjects and
have been of relatively short duration. Few adverse effeets have been
reported in these studies and there are no reports on the effects of long
term confinement.60
The task of understanding the effects of dissociation is also complicated
by a tendency to focus on the physical conditions of confinement. This
tendency is part of our general perception of imprisonment as above all
else a physical punishment. The tendency is compounded among those who
gravitate to the study and practice of criminal law because the law is
concerned primarily with physical harms to the person, to property, or
to public order. In the world of lawyers, therefore, the points of reference
for crime and punishment are primarily physical. However, in the world
of letters there is a rich literature which conceives of crime and punishment
in ways that focus on the psychological dimensions of suffering. As I
will endeavour to show, Dostoevsky is a surer guide than Glanville Williams
in understanding what it is that we do, in the name of the criminal law,
when we send men to the solitary-confinement cells.
The importance of understanding the effects of solitary confinement in
terms beyond the physical was recognized by the study group on dissociation
appointed in 1975 by the federal solicitor-general to consider 'the usefulness
of dissociation as a method of punishment, the effectiveness of dissociation
as a means of protecting inmates, and the living conditions that exist
in both types of dissociation from the point of view of humane treatment
and the negative effects of prolonged isolation.'61
The study group found that 'most segregated inmates complained more about
the manner in which they were treated than the physical conditions in
which they lived,' and that 'the physical milieu is not as crucial to
the inmate as the psychological.'62 Having
noted the lack of adequate scientific studies on long-term dissociation,
the study group set out the factors they felt were likely to affect the
degree to which segregation was detrimental to a prisoner: the reason
for being segregated; the process by which the prisoner is segregated;
the physical facilities and routine; the lack of contact with staff and
other prisoners; the length of the period of segregation; the uncertainty
as to when a prisoner will be released; and the process by which the prisoner
is returned to the population. The study group devoted just three pages
of its report to an elaboration of these factors.63
During the McCann case some four weeks
of evidence was given, much of it relating to the effects of solitary
confinement. In fact, the evidence of the plaintiffs and their expert
witnesses constitutes the largest body of data so far assembled for the
purpose of documenting the effects of long-term segregation. Dr. Richard
Korn, in his evidence, said that in light of the hiatus in the scientific
literature, 'there are no experts other than the prisoners ...This is
the only evidence available to science.'64
Before turning to the evidence of the prisoners, however, something should
be said about that evidence. Mr Justice Heald stated in his judgment that
he accepted the plaintiffs' account of the effects on them of the conditions
in SCU. Despite this finding, it may occur to some readers that perhaps
it was in the plaintiffs' interests to paint the bleakest possible picture
of life in solitary confinement. It is important to understand the price
paid by the plaintiffs in giving evidence at this trial. The plaintiffs,
in seeking to make the court understand the full horror of their confinement,
had to relive their experiences in solitary. Jack McCann and Mel Miller
broke down in the court under the strain of that remembrance. It was not
an easy thing for prisoners to admit in front of the guards with whom
they would go back to the prison that the solitary confinement experience
broke them down. Such an admission is easily interpreted as a sign of
weakness, and for many prisoners in the super-macho society of maximum
security, weakness must never be shown in front of penitentiary staff.
Such is the nature of the relationship between the keeper and the kept.
But some of these plaintiffs, in an effort to avoid the continuation of
what they believed to be a barbarous system, were prepared to admit in
front of their guards that they could be brought to tears when they recalled
and relived what had been done to them and to their friends in solitary.
The plaintiffs faced another great difficulty in presenting their evidence.
They were talking about events quite beyond the experience of the man
who was being asked to pass judgment on those events. Hermann Hesse has
eloquently captured their dilemma:
To express in words something that refuses to be put
into words ...what gives these experiences their weight and persuasiveness
is not their truth ...but their reality. They are tremendously real, somewhat
the way a violent physical pain or a surprising natural event, a storm
or earthquake, seem to us charged with an entirely different sort of reality,
presence, inexorability, from ordinary times and conditions.65 Page 1 of 9
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