In 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture said anything over 15 days in solitary confinement is a human rights abuse-which other sources have interpreted as torture. But some groups, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have gone beyond calling the SHU solitary confinement-they call it torture.
(KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting launched an investigation on Pelican Bay in February 2013)Īgain, there is no universally accepted definition of solitary confinement. The only times prisoners get to leave the cell is to visit the shower, or the exercise yard-which is an empty, windowless room not that much bigger than a cell, with twenty-foot high concrete walls. Credit: Nancy Mullaneīut on the other hand, cells don’t have windows. Notice that the cell faces a blank wall, seen through the visual distortion of the perforated metal door.
Prisoner Robert Luca sitting outside of his cell.
Terry Kupers at the Conference on Solitary Confinement and Human Rights, November 2012: Terry Kupers says that a SHU ”destroys people as human beings.” In California, SHU inmates are 33 times more likely to commit suicide than other prisoners incarcerated elsewhere in the state. There are even reports of eye damage due to the restriction on distance viewing. Some psychiatrists, such as Terry Kupers, say there is a whole litany of effects that a SHU can have on a person: massive anxiety, paranoia, depression, concentration and memory problems, and loss of ability to control one’s anger (which can get a prisoner in trouble and lengthen the SHU sentence). It’s the amount of time many prisoners spend in that cells, alone, without any meaningful activity. But it’s not just these architectural features, that concern humanitarian activists and psychiatrists. It’s not a space that’s designed to keep you comfortable. Life inside of the SHU at Pelican Bay means 22 to 23 hours a day inside of 7.5 by 12-foot room. The control rooms are accessed by an upper deck, which has a metal mesh floor allowing officers to fire a shotgun down into the pod in the event of a security breach. Control rooms monitor the pods, and can open and close cell doors remotely. Each “pod” contains six cells, a shower, and an exercise yard.
0 kommentar(er)
