During my time away this summer I did a considerable amount of reading about the physical, mental, and spiritual benefits of silence. Silence and it's companion solitude have been considered essential for communion with God through the centuries. The opposite of silence is noise, unwanted sound, and we know that we are an increasingly noisy species. Even though creativity often emerges from the two S's, we bombard ourselves with noise as entertainment, a tool for selling products, as an aspect of the devices of all shapes and sizes we just must have.
Silence has a shadow side as well. Too much of it can drive people bonkers, and even those who have chosen it in the religious life can suffer from side effects such as hallucinations and paranoia.
I was interested in the concern expressed in the media last week that segregation is being used much more frequently in our Canadian jails and prisons as a form of punishment. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/08/06/pol-prison-segregation-solitary-confinement.html
During my seminary training I did a chaplaincy internship at Kingston Penitentiary and one of my assigned areas was the solitary confinement unit lovingly known as "The Hole." Prisoners who ended up there spent twenty-three and a half hours a day apart from other humans and were afforded half an hour for exercise in a small yard without other inmates present. The cells were bleak and narrow. The window was high on the wall and there was no view. Other than brief contact from guards and medical staff my visits as a chaplain were the only interaction inmates had. I quickly realized that a number of the men entered the Hole with mental health issues and they just became worse in isolation. Silence was an enemy rather than a consolation.
There are some remarkable figures such as Nelson Mandela who managed to endure and actually become stronger in this sort of environment but few others have his fortitude. It is intended to crush people and it is effective in a perverse way.
What do you think of a justice system which uses isolation as a form of punishment? I wonder if we learned anything from Ashley Smith's death. Have silence and solitude been friend or foe in your experience?
2 comments:
What concerns me the most is that some of the inmates who have been placed in isolation are incarcerated for non-violent offenses, or not even criminals - they are there for immigration offenses. Some are placed there because they are homosexual or have been sexually assaulted by other inmates. I don't think those are appropriate uses of isolation.
I don't think isolation should be scrapped entirely. Inmates who continue to be a threat to other inmates or staff may need to be isolated. However, it should be used in extreme cases and not liberally as it seems to be in the U.S.
Community is important, even in a prison setting, and isolation probably does no good for anyone, except the guards, whose jobs may be made a bit easier - our justice system does little to reform criminals - I think it only teaches inmates more skills for future trouble.
As you mentioned, David, mental health issues - and serious learning disabilities - are often at the root of anti-social behaviour, and these need to be addressed, in the prisons as well as in society in general (but educational resources for these things are often first to be cut)
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