Reduce solitary confinement, urges medical journal

Placing prisoners in drab, solitary cells for 23 hours a day can have “substantial health effects, including suicide and should be severely limited,” urges an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. It calls the practice “cruel and unusual punishment.”

On any given day, about 850 inmates in federal prisons are in solitary confinement. That represents 5.6 per cent of all the inmates. There is an overrepresentation of aboriginal and young inmates, as well as those with pre-existing mental health conditions.

Segregation may change the brain

Recent research indicates that the lack of stimulation in solitary confinement can lead to changes in the brain which may or may not be reversible.

“Prisoners say that within a few days, they begin to have difficulty separating their own thoughts from actual reality,” says Dr. Diane Kelsall, deputy editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. “This can lead over time to things like paranoia, disturbed thought processes, and psychosis. And also very worrying, is that it can lead to things like anxiety, depression, attempted suicide and of course most tragically, completed suicide.”

ListenPhysical effects can include lethargy, insomnia, palpitations and anorexia.

Shorten solitary confinement

Inmates should only be isolated in “exceptional circumstances” says Kelsall, and then for only a very short time.  Currently 16 per cent of those in solitary confinement stay there for more than four months.

Canada’s own correctional investigator has repeatedly argued that offenders with mental health issues or previous suicide attempts should not be placed in solitary confinement for long periods.The United Nations says it should be banned in most cases.

Segregation ‘a last resort’

The government says segregation is only used as a last resort where there is a risk to the safety of the inmate or staff, or where the inmate might interfere with an investigation.