# Being on lockdown 23 hours a day, inhumane? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 28, 2008, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909 "2008-05-28T18:09:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![diggleblop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac91a4/32.png) [@diggleblop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/diggleblop)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/1 "2008-05-28T18:09:19Z")
Do you think it’s inhumane to lock up the most hardened criminals for 23 hours a day? I was watching “Lockup” the other night and they were interviewing some of the prisoners and they were talking of people being on lockdown and going absolutely insane after just a few months. I personally think that even though they did something to deserve getting in that situation, it is still inhumane to lock someone in a concrete box for 23 hours a day for years at a time. Yes, some of them can’t be in general population, yes they were given chance after chance and yes, they should be locked up for 23 hours a day as punishment, but not FOR YEARS AT A STRETCH ! Maybe 90 days at most. I don’t think it works, what are your feelings on this issue? I personally feel that there needs to be some sort of change in the prison’s program for these inmates. I know they are the worst of the worst, but still are human. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/2 "2008-05-28T18:19:25Z")
Are they given access to books or television while in their cell? If so I personally would rather be in solitary confinement than in the general population which I think really is cruel punishment. Of course if all they can do is stare at the walls 23 hours a day then yeah, that would seem excessive. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/3 "2008-05-28T18:19:33Z")
[QUOTE=diggleblop] I don’t think it works, what are your feelings on this issue? I personally feel that there needs to be some sort of change in the prison’s program for these inmates. I know they are the worst of the worst, but still are human. [/QUOTE] You are describing either a stand-alone Supermax prison or one within a regular maximum security prison. I am not sure what you mean by saying it doesn’t work. They are completely isolated and likely to be there for life. You can’t get much effective at protecting both themselves, other prisoners, guards, an the general public than that. Some of them are there for heinous crimes against the public. The Unibomber and one of the Oklahoma city bombers are in a federal Supermax facility in Colorado for that reason. They aren’t going to hurt anybody else. Other Supermax type prisoners have a proven tendency to consistently try to hard guards, prisoners, or instigate gang activity from inside a normal maximum security prison. After repeated transgressions, they just conclude that person is going to be a continued threat and needs to be bumped up to the next level of detention. I am not sure what could be done otherwise. It is pretty severe punishment but the death penalty is the next option so you have to pick one. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/4 "2008-05-28T18:20:57Z")
[QUOTE=diggleblop] I personally feel that there needs to be some sort of change in the prison’s program for these inmates. I know they are the worst of the worst, but still are human. [/QUOTE] Yes, they are human. Humans who are incredibly, incorrigably violent. Sure, it’s inhumane. To animals. By the time they get there, it’s because they can’t be safely kept anywhere else; in a more enlightened time, they’d have simply been executed quick and clean and been done with it. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/5 "2008-05-28T18:22:53Z")
[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole] Are they given access to books or television while in their cell? If so I personally would rather be in solitary confinement than in the general population which I think really is cruel punishment. Of course if all they can do is stare at the walls 23 hours a day then yeah, that would seem excessive. [/QUOTE] I looked that up before and they can have a small radio in some of these facilities and they can usually read and write letters. They also have access to an attorney. Other than that, the accommodations about about as restrictive and bleak as they come. Their 1 hour of recreation a day is basically just a cell without a roof. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/6 "2008-05-28T20:35:29Z")
mmm, isocubes. Dredd would be proud. As long as muscles aren’t atrophying and they have some mental stimulation (books, radio), I’m not against it. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/7 "2008-05-28T21:19:22Z")
I think they should just make an island prison colony out in the middle of the ocean somewhere, and just drop all those prisoners into Gen Pop. Send deliveries of food every week, enough for all the prisoners, but if they kill each other, oh well. I think that would be less cruel than what is described in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Understander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@The\_Understander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Understander)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/8 "2008-05-28T21:24:39Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] I think they should just make an island prison colony out in the middle of the ocean somewhere, and just drop all those prisoners into Gen Pop. Send deliveries of food every week, enough for all the prisoners, but if they kill each other, oh well. I think that would be less cruel than what is described in the OP. [/QUOTE] You want to be responsible for \*another \*Australia?! I hope you can sleep at night! Seriously, I don’t think it’s cruel at all. These are individuals that, for whatever reason, are beyond help or the ability to want it (your standard disclaimer applies for the wrongfully convicted and those who are sincerely, truly repentant) and the choice of what to do with them if you don’t want more violence is total isolation or death. And since I’m a card-carrying Bleeding-Heart Librul, I say lock them up. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/9 "2008-05-28T22:06:51Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] You are describing either a stand-alone Supermax prison or one within a regular maximum security prison. I am not sure what you mean by saying it doesn’t work. They are completely isolated and likely to be there for life. You can’t get much effective at protecting both themselves, other prisoners, guards, an the general public than that. Some of them are there for heinous crimes against the public. The Unibomber and one of the Oklahoma city bombers are in a federal Supermax facility in Colorado for that reason. They aren’t going to hurt anybody else. Other Supermax type prisoners have a proven tendency to consistently try to hard guards, prisoners, or instigate gang activity from inside a normal maximum security prison. After repeated transgressions, they just conclude that person is going to be a continued threat and needs to be bumped up to the next level of detention. I am not sure what could be done otherwise. [/QUOTE] This is all pretty much inaccurate. I posted about this 2 1/2 years ago, [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6902558#post6902558), with links to 2 articles from “Locked Down: Gangs in the Supermax”. From [Go Forth and Sin No More](http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prisongangs/b1.html): > [@](#): > > . . . Prisons were moving firmly away from rehabilitation. In 1977, California actually removed the term “rehabilitation” from the mission statement of the department of corrections. John Irwin says America looked to new ways to contain, not rehabilitate, violent prisoners. > > “That was part of the supermax thinking; places to hold people, incapacitate people for long periods of time,” says Irwin. “But they were really based on the attempts to control this new obstreperous population of people who were into first racial violence and then gang violence.” > > “That was the reason for Pelican Bay,” says Daniel Vasquez who worked in corrections for 30 years. He was warden of San Quentin Prison in the 1980s when courts approved the use of extreme isolation of inmates. That set in motion the rise of the supermax and the building of Pelican Bay State Prison in a remote corner of California’s north coast. > > “It was no man’s land,” says Vasquez. “Nobody wanted to be there, but that’s where you went. And that was the end of the line for you. And we built this mammoth prison to house you under the most adverse conditions possible of isolation, of light deprivation and human deprivation because you were a tough dangerous gang member and, by gosh, we were going to treat you that way.” > > . . . > > Brown says a monochrome hopelessness pervades the SHU, and **enhances the gangs’ ability to recruit young men**. > > . . . > > Prison officials say reducing violence in the general inmate population is the reason they have to lock all prison gang members in the SHU. But in spite of rigorous security, the SHU does not shut down gangs. > > “Even though we do our best to segregate them in this kind of environment,” says Perez, “they’ve adapted. They’ve learned where the weaknesses are in the system. They’ve adapted and they use whatever is available to them.” > > In some cases, the men in here are ordering murders, drug deals, all sorts of crimes on the outside, not just in prison. From [Pinta Bound](http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prisongangs/a1.html): > [@](#): > > . . . “When I walked in there,” says Frias, “I went to the jukebox, came up behind him, and shot him. I thought I hit him in the back of the head and I found out I hit him in the back of the neck.” > > The victim died at the scene. Armando Frias Jr. was arrested and imprisoned. But the leaders of the group behind the killing were already in prison. Frias was acting on behalf of a powerful Latino prison gang. The group is called “Our Family” - in Spanish, Nuestra Familia, or NF. > > “All over Northern California,” Frias explains, “you’ve got these regiments that are being run by the NF, and all these regular street gang members out there selling drugs, they’re paying a certain percentage to the NF. They call it paying rent or taxes. That’s just the way the NF runs, that’s the way they run the streets.” > > **The NF isn’t a street gang that’s gone to prison. It’s a prison gang that’s hit the streets. The NF and other prison gangs have flourished in a place designed to shut them down.** > > . . . > > Most of the inmates in the SHU are gang members. Their cells are windowless and nearly bare. The men are locked inside for 22 and a half hours a day, usually alone. They are held in virtual isolation to try to keep them from working together, but even the SHU can’t stop some leaders from running their gangs. > > . . . Really chilling articles. I recommend reading all of them in their entirety. I don’t profess to know what the answer would be, but your assessment of the Supermax as a place that prevents further crime is about as far off as possible. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/10 "2008-05-28T22:21:19Z")
[QUOTE=Shayna] I don’t profess to know what the answer would be, but your assessment of the Supermax as a place that prevents further crime is about as far off as possible. [/QUOTE] I am not following your comments. If a very dangerous prisoner randomly attacks guards and other inmates in regular prison then they can’t do that anymore in a true Supermax. It is barely even possible. They don’t have anything that could be used as a weapon, they are monitored every single second, and they get fed through a slot in their totally bare cell. Their communications are also completely monitored. Where do you see room for opportunity to help run a gang from there? You may be referring to some other type of prison rather than a Supermax. They think of everything when they build a Supermax down to making the entire facility helicopter escape proof. Are you referring to something like Alcatraz because Supermaxes are way beyond that in terms of restrictions and security. I started a thread on this too and I will see if I can find it. It got some good answers. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/11 "2008-05-28T22:29:11Z")
It sounds like you are describing a prototype Supermax when they can become much worse and limiting than that today. Many are in for life under the most strict conditions allowed at least at the individual level, maybe not as much for the whole. They prevent crime by definition the same way the death penalty does. Dangerous criminals are completely taken away from society forever. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/12 "2008-05-28T22:29:20Z")
**Shagnasty** , with all due respect, I’ll look forward to your further reply after you have read the links I have provided. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/13 "2008-05-28T22:32:02Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] I am not following your comments. If a very dangerous prisoner randomly attacks guards and other inmates in regular prison then they can’t do that anymore in a true Supermax. It is barely even possible. They don’t have anything that could be used as a weapon, they are monitored every single second, and they get fed through a slot in their totally bare cell. Their communications are also completely monitored. Where do you see room for opportunity to help run a gang from there? You may be referring to some other type of prison rather than a Supermax. [/quote] The quotes are talking about Supermax and SHU units. If you missed that in the quoted text, Ctrl-F and you will see. Apparently, prisoners in Supermax and SHU units are _still_ finding ways to commit serious crimes up to and including murder (at least by proxy) while in lockdown. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/14 "2008-05-28T22:54:32Z")
[QUOTE=Shayna] **Shagnasty** , with all due respect, I’ll look forward to your further reply after you have read the links I have provided. [/QUOTE] I did read a lot of them. I wasn’t completely ignorant of this issue before I replied to the thread. I have started threads about it and replied to related ones before. The main facility I was thinking of is [ADX Florence in Florence Colorado.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence). It is the main federal Supermax facility and it is where the most notorious federal prisoners are kept. There are over 400 prisoners at any given time. Lapses in security allowed three letters to get out over the years that resulted in crime. Even that should be easy to improve upon with better mail screening but I don’t demand a 100% success rate to say something is a huge improvement. They are very close to it right now and over half of them are prisoners that either killed other prisoners or attempted to kill one or a guard. That certainly doesn’t seem like a failure to me. I can’t see another alternative without opening an assembly line to the gas chamber. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/15 "2008-05-28T23:07:15Z")
[QUOTE=diggleblop] Do you think it’s inhumane to lock up the most hardened criminals for 23 hours a day? [/QUOTE] If they didn’t want to be treated like shit, then they shouldn’t have broken the fucking law. They’re lucky that they did it in this day and age; in the past, they’d likely have been executed for their crimes. I have a hard time justifying spending any more money to make criminals’ sentences easier, when there are plenty of people out there deserving of assistance who didn’t break the law. I kind of like **mswas’s** idea… except pick somewhere like Johnston Island or maybe Rongelap, and make the inmates remove the radioactive soil. I see no problem with involuntary servitude if you’re convicted of certain felonies. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/16 "2008-05-28T23:17:23Z")
[QUOTE=bump] They’re lucky that they did it in this day and age; in the past, they’d likely have been executed for their crimes. [/QUOTE] I’d think 24 hour solitary confinement for life (the one hour of exercise is still solitary) is worse than death. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/17 "2008-05-28T23:21:04Z")
Yes. It is as inhumane as killing another human being. If you don’t want to end up in a concrete box, don’t do stupid shit. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/18 "2008-05-28T23:22:19Z")
My 2 cents on those segregated inmates I’ve observed (a few hundred, if not a thousand by now): It’s the mentally ill that end up in such lockdowns most often. In our system, 70% of those in segregation (where they’re in their cells for more than 23 hours a day with no radio, TV, cellmate, or more than 3 books, for up to a year at a time) are significantly mentally ill. The mentally ill are the ones who have the most trouble obeying the rules in prison, get in trouble often enough, and end up there. And until recently they got sent to the supermax a lot too. But now our system requires a psychiatrist to decide if supermax is an option for an inmate. So we have fewer with significant mental diagnoses in supermax now. And as a result, the supermax has been converted into a partial max prison too, since occupancy dropped so low once that population was restricted from placement there. But the mentally ill still can (and do) get segregation in the regular prisons. So in our system, it’s not just the ultraviolent that end up in extreme segregation, but also folks who truly do seem to be constitutionally incapable of following some basic rules. It’s not ideal. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/19 "2008-05-28T23:32:20Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] I think they should just make an island prison colony out in the middle of the ocean somewhere, and just drop all those prisoners into Gen Pop. Send deliveries of food every week, enough for all the prisoners, but if they kill each other, oh well. [/QUOTE] We don’t have another Australia available, but we do have [Kerguelen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerguelen)! Not like prisoners dropped off there are going to escape or anything. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909/20 "2008-05-28T23:47:45Z")
[QUOTE=Chimera] We don’t have another Australia available, but we do have [Kerguelen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerguelen)! Not like prisoners dropped off there are going to escape or anything. [/QUOTE] It doesn’t need to be a continent. We’re talking about the worst of the worst here, not all prisoners, only the truly crazy psychos. Have the Coast Guard circle it and keep watch, blow any rafts leaving out of the water. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-on-lockdown-23-hours-a-day-inhumane/450909.md?page=2)