Approximately 2.2 million people in our country are currently incarcerated. Of these people, about 100,000 are currently being held in solitary confinement (Wagner, 2016).
Solitary confinement is the isolation of an inmate from human contact that is used as a form of punishment. Solitary confinement has been a controversial method used in prisons around the country due to the damaging affects it can have to prisoners. Spending 23 hours in complete isolation can have devastating effects on people whose crimes that are not worthy of that punishment. People currently serving for petty crimes and even juveniles can also be subjected to solitary confinement. This is a topic that is important because the U.S currently spends $80 billion dollars on keeping people incarcerated (Wagner, 2016). This is money that could be invested in other important areas, such as funding higher education.
Inmates in solitary confinement are not treated as humans and are deprived of the communication skills that they will need to succeed once they are finished serving their sentence. By damaging their mental health and communication skills and forcing them into isolation, they are left more vulnerable to falling back into the system that was never working for them in the first place. This in return keeps people incarcerated and forces the country to waste even more money and resources. Prison is supposed to be a place of correction where people pay their debt to society, not where they should come to leave in worse shape than where they started.
With this, President Obama has recently ordered an executive order which would ban solitary confinement for juveniles as well as inmates who have committed low level infractions. This order will affect 10,000 prisoners all over the country (Wagner, 2016). Solitary confinement is a counter-productive, resource draining strategy. With the spread of awareness as well as the movement of more legislation, solitary confinement could ultimately be banned and would lower the U.S incarceration rate, lower the amount of money being spent on prisons, bring more money back into the economy, and would overall improve the treatment and mental health of those who are currently imprisoned.