Massachusetts prisons have been at the center of the debate around solitary confinement recently due to the large number of inmates the state places in isolation, often for months or years at a time.

An attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services, James Pingeon, told The Boston Globe that reports from 2018 — which showed at least 2,100 prisoners were put in isolation at some point — reveal “a staggeringly high number and [show] that many people are placed in solitary for minor infractions of prison rules.”

In some cases, temporary solitary confinement is necessary to deescalate dangerous situations and keep inmates safe from themselves and others. But putting someone in that sort of isolation indefinitely, with a review of their placement only every three months, may actually be counterproductive.

If an inmate is a consistent problem to the point that they are incapable of interacting with other humans in any other capacity, then there are likely issues that go deeper than the crime they committed. 

Mental illness is an epidemic within the entire American prison system, but individuals that are consistently isolated for behavioral issues are in desperate need of a path to improvement, which does not involve an endless sentence in a tiny prison cell to themselves.

Solitary confinement alone will not fix the issues that send inmates there in the first place. Mental health treatment in combination with educational programs are more conducive to progress within such an intense environment. The same goes for all inmates, but these initiatives have the potential to improve the quality of life for inmates not only as they serve time but once they are released.

Inmates in the most restrictive forms of confinement can be held there for up to ten years unless they “have a serious mental illness or receive special dispensation from the superintendent.” Ten years is a ludicrous amount of time to confine a human to one space, with little to no access to other people or even sunlight.

The effects that has on a person are immeasurable, and the American Psychological Association concluded that inmates in isolation are “at grave risk of psychological harm” and can “render many people incapable of living anywhere else.”

The long three month period between reviews is indicative that the priority of the prisons is not rehabilitation, but punishment. The catch is that the reality of being imprisoned and stripped of their freedom is what inmates have been sentenced to and is enough.

Unless serious and dangerous situations arise — which, if are recurring, signal a need for mental rehabilitation in a separate facility — solitary confinement must be kept at a minimum. And in those situations, it should be used as a tool to separate individuals that need to be neutralized, not as an additional punishment.

If the goal of solitary confinement is to improve the situation of the individual that is confined as well as the general population of the prison, conditions that border on cruel and unusual are not the quickest route to progress.