After I watched the video Solitary Nation in http://video.pbs.org/video/2365229709/, I know more about the situation of inmates get solitary confinement and how it impacts the inmates’ lives. Solitary confinement is a kind of imprisonment in the United States. It isolates inmates from any human contacts and restricts inmates’ activities in a cell for 23 hours a day, the inmates only can ask to go out for exercise one hour in an iron case a day. It is a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner and has been cited as an additional measure of protection from the inmate. This type of punishment also breaks prison regulations because it also causes a lot of self-abusive problems to inmates. Besides that, it also can be a form of protective custody.
Solitary confinement began in the United States in the 1800s as a progressive experiment to see if isolation would reform criminals. It was soon largely abandoned because prisoners did not reform, they lost their minds. Prisoners complain that officers do not know what is going on in the solitary unit. But in 1980s, solitary re-emerged as a way to stamp out prison violence. The United States has more inmates in solitary than any other Western country. Since 2011, the number of inmates in solitary at Maine State Prison has fallen by 50%.But in February 2014, a prison released from solitary murdered another inmate. This victim was stabbed 87 times. Warden is still trying to reduce the number of inmates in solitary. States across the country are now starting to rethink the use of segregation, three years ago, Maine began to send fewer inmates into solitary and moved prisoners with serious mental illness out of the unit. Now the prisons new warden is trying to take the reform even further.
According to the video, there is about 80,000 Americans are held in solitary confinement. This video deeply examines the use and impact of this controversial practice—and takes an unprecedented look at life inside solitary...