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Emma Sulfsted

Professor Vicki Stalbird

English 1201

30 June 2019

Annotated Bibliography

My essay is going to attempt to show that long-term solitary confinement should be

minimized in the United States prison system because it is mentally damaging, expensive, and

counter-productive. Solitary confinement, known as administrative segregation in prisons, was

created as a way to control violence within prisons, in order to improve conditions and

rehabilitate inmates.

Breslow, Jason M. “What Does Solitary Confinement Do To Your Mind?” PBS, Public

Broadcasting Service, 22 Apr. 2014, www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/what-does-

solitary-confinement-do-to-your-mind/.

In Jason Breslow’s 2014 FRONTLINE article “What Does Solitary Confinement Do To

Your Mind?” Breslow examines many academic studies, all of which show that the social impact

of long-term isolation has severe social impact on humans. In fact, in a McGill University study,

male students being tested lasted only 1 week in what was going to be a 6 week trial. Yet,

inmates held in solitary confinement can be kept there for their entire prison sentence, and suffer

extreme consequences – studies show that one third of solitary inmates were psychotic or

suicidal. Not to mention, one-fifth to two-thirds of prisoners in administrative segregation

already had a mental illness upon entering solitary, and their deterioration is extremified by
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solitary, not helped. Frontline reports that prisoners say upon given a chance to interact with

others, they no longer are able to after spending so much time in solitary.

Breslow writes this article in order to inform the general public of what is occurring

inside our prisons, to take a second look at rehabilitation efforts. Although the article is a few

years old, the information still reigns true and can be backed by even more recent sources. In

order to use his information, I may need to find more updated statistics, but if his article is

correct, the statistics should be about the same or prove his points even further. PBS is an

educational platform, and everything behind this article is based on fact and statistics, making it

a credible, reliable source to gain information from. Breslow himself is credible through his

masters degree and work through many educational and informative platforms, and backs this by

using research from credible universities.

I will use this information to provide statistical analysis to go hand-in-hand with more

circumstantial witness and experiential evidence. It can be used to back statements of prisoners

and those who argue for abolishment of long-term solitary confinement. The research shows that

isolation greatly affects the human mind – and makes the reader wonder why or how this is

helping prisoners grow to better members of society.

Bozelko, Chandra. “Solitary Confinement Is Inhumane. I Should Know – I Spent 30 Days

There.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 28 Apr. 2016,

www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2016/apr/28/solitary-confinement-

inhumane-prison-stories-6-x-9.

During her time in a Connecticut prison, Chandra Bozelko experienced horrors in only a

month of administrative segregation, which she speaks out on in her 2016 article “Solitary
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Confinement Is Inhumane. I Should Know – I spent 30 Days There,” from the Guardian News

site. Bozelko claims she was starved by the prison guards, as they found it funny to soil her food

by pushing it on the ground when they were meant to give it to her. After being released into

general population, other inmates thought from her suddenly thin figure she had been away on

medical – receiving chemotherapy. She explains that in solitary, she was unable to make contact

with anyone outside of the prison, and the only people she could report abuse to were her

abusers. While living in a filthy space, she had no ability to anything herself, and even when a

lieutenant or captain came around, they were accompanied by guards, there only with the

purpose of censoring an inmates ability to complain.

This firsthand account of what life is like in solitary shows some of the unknown horrors

these inmates experience, which was Bozelko’s purpose in writing this article. Backed by a well-

known factual news source, Bozelko’s claims become more credible. Although she could be

lying about her experience, and this article lacks facts other than the experience of Bozelko,

much of what she says can be backed by scholarly research found in other articles.

This information is very valuable to my research. It shows first-hand accounts of just how

bad life in solitary can be. If Bozelko experienced such horrors in only a month of solitary, it

makes the reader quick to wonder what it must be like to endure solitary confinement for long-

term prison sentences. I think it will be a shock to my readers to read that these are the things

happening in American prisons, and then I will back it with further analytical data.

Davidson, Joe. “Staff Shortages, Solitary Confinement Increase Risks for Federal Prisoners and

Public.” The Washington Post, WP Company LLC, 14 July 2017,

www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/07/14/staff-shortages-solitary-
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confinement-increase-risks-for-federal-prisoners-and-

public/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.45c6527c9b8b .

Joe Davidsons report “Staff Shortages, Solitary Confinement Increase Risks for Federal

Prisoners and Public,” from the Washington post, just two years ago, reports on the Inspector

General’s research on how solitary confinement isn’t helping prisoners, and isn’t helping the

public either. This research shows proof that inmates upon release from solitary are in fact not

better members of society, and are more likely to reoffend. Their time in prison is not helping

them, as the worst of all staff shortages is that of mental health professionals and doctors and

nurses – only 57% of the needed psychiatrist positions are filled. The Inspector General’s report

concluded that there needs to be significantly more steps taken by the Bureau of Prisons.

Davidson writes this article in order to share research concluded by the Inspector

General’s office of the United States – which is clearly a credible source as it is the internal

watchdog of the American justice system. This research, done by highly ranked officials, is

shared by the Washington Post in order to be more widely accessible to the public. The

information is very recent, making it relevant to today’s climate of the justice system. The author

himself is an expert on federal government issues and politics.

I am going to use this report as hard-hitting evidence and backing behind my research. If

the Inspector General is stating various problems within the constructs of solitary confinement in

the US, then it is definitely something worth looking at. His research serves as proof of not only

mental health problems caused by solitary, but the counter-productivity of solitary, with its effect

of increased recidivism.
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Glazer, Sarah. "Prisoners and Mental Illness." CQ Researcher, 13 Mar. 2015, pp. 241-64,

library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2015031300 .

Sarah Glazer’s 2015 scholarly article “Prisoners and Mental Illness,” published through

CQ Researcher, takes an extremely thorough look at the rising problems with mentally-ill

prisoners stuck in solitary confinement. The article begins by a look at photographic evidence of

a 19-year old inmate who, despite “best efforts” to avoid him bodily harm, as in a helmet stuck to

his head and being chained to his bed, had banged his head and body to the point of extreme

bleeding. This instance of a mentally ill prisoner causing harm to themselves is one of many, and

the article goes on to find many statistics about the mentally ill in solitary, including that for

Chicago’s Cook County jail, the number of mentally ill inmates has doubled in the prior 8 years.

The article takes a look at the chronology of solitary confinement, as well as allows arguments

from State Senator Lesniak, for the sake of banning solitary, and that of NY State Correctional

Officers President Powers, against banning solitary. It examines reports that not only are

mentally ill inmates being forced into solitary, but many others with no pre-existing illness

develop severe mental and social damage because of solitary.

This article was written to provide research, first-hand accounts, statistics, and more to

begin to answer the question “Are too many with psychiatric problems behind bars?” Published

through QR Researcher, a scholarly library source, it finds credibility and backing in the

scholarly community. The author Glazer is considered an expert on social policy in the United

States and Europe, and writes regularly for the magazine, based in our nation’s capital. While

Glazer poses questions throughout the article, all of the information is based on either statistics

or first-hand accounts and experiential data, and leaves argument to those even closer to the

issue.
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This article provides endless information. Printed out, it was 18 pages long, longer than

my paper will even be. There are so many sources, all listed at the end, that I can use as data to

analyze throughout my research. The most striking of these is the evidence behind mental illness

in solitary, which I can speak thoroughly about as perhaps the main reason the use of AS should

be limited. For many of these inmates, their “crime” was being off their medication, yet they are

put in an environement that’s only worsening their mentally ill state of mind. I plan to speak

fully and factually about this information.

Hagan, Brian O., et al. “History of Solitary Confinement Is Associated with Post-Traumatic

Stress Disorder Symptoms among Individuals Recently Released from Prison.” Journal

of Urban Health, no. 2, 2018, p. 141. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11524-017-0138-1.

This 2018 Report concluded by authors Hagan, Wang, Aminawung, Albizu-Garcia,

Zaller, Nyamu, Shavit, Deluca, and Fox, “History of Solitary Confinement is Associated with

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms among Individuals Recently Released from Prison,”

published in the Journal of Urban Health, finds through a conclusive study that 43% of former

solitary prisoners were found to have PTSD symptoms post release, a great increase from 16% of

former general population prisoners. Those who already had mental illness symptoms were 93%

positive for PTSD post-release.

This source is entirely a factual report of these studies, done by 9 different researchers

with completely conclusive results. It is meant only to share the results of their research, and I

found it through scholarly research through the Sinclair library. This report can be reviewed as a

credible source because it is not only incredibly relevant, less than a year old, but done through
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complete scientific research with solitary confinement as the independent variable, and

symptoms of PTSD as the dependent.

I will be using this information as conclusive proof of the damaging results of time spent

in solitary-confinement, a proponent as to why it should be considered inhumane and minimized

in our prison systems. Obviously, if a study of 120 former prisoners was able to conclude such

harmful effects caused by segregation, it is something that should not be occurring.

Jacobson, Kristi, director. Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison. HBO, Home Box Office, Inc.,

2017, www.hbo.com/documentaries/solitary-inside-red-onion-state-prison .

In HBO’s 2017 documentary Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison, director Kristi

Jacobson films the true lives of those inside a Virginia supermax, from the inmates in

segregation or “seg,” as they call it, to the guards and officers working there. Through interviews

and filming of the true experience, Jacobson shows the loneliness and sometime psychosis that

occurs. There is audible screaming and banging at all times, with prisoners kept in 8x10 feet cells

for 23 hours a day, except for their hour-long excerise time in a cage in a larger room. The

segregation facility was opened in 1998, with the goal of being a more secure environment,

where prisoners are sent there by prison officials, not sentenced to it by a judge or jury. First-

hand accounts vary from daydreams of the world outside to descriptions of their deteriorating

mental states.

Jacobson created this film to give an in-depth look into just what is happening in our

prisons in real time. There is no argument made for or against solitary, just simply filming of

what goes on, and the viewer is left to decide how they feel about it. This film is credible

because it was created through a large-scale company, and shows real footage of real prisoners
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and guards, without leaving anything out. Jacobson herself is an Emmy award-winning director,

known for her accurate documentaries.

This documentary serves as further first-hand evidence of what life is like in solitary, and

the damage shows through these inmates. I will use quotes directly from interviews with both

inmates and guards as a voice behind the data. These stories are a way to use pathos through my

essay, to connect the reader to those in solitary on a human, personal level.

Morgan, Robert D., et al. “Questioning Solitary Confinement: Is Administrative Segregation as

Bad as Alleged?” Corrections Today, vol. 79, no. 5, Sept. 2017, p. 18. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=125105815&site=eds-live.

In the 2017 Corrections Today article “Questioning Solitary Confinement,” Robert

Morgan looks at various stances for and against the use of solitary confinement in prisons. At the

time, 1/5 of all prison inmates were in administrative segregation, despite numerous reports that

AS causes a great few negative mental health problems. In their review, two different studies

came to show that that AS contributed to medial and psychological problems, as well as the

problem of recidivism post-release. However, they found that the effects of AS were similar to

the effects of simply incarceration itself, as compared to those in general population. Results

could vary greatly from very good to very bad, depending on if it was their first time incarcerated

and more. Adaptation to your surroundings for some narrowed some of the effects. However, it

was clear that those with mental illnesses were doing worse due to AS, causing the report to urge

limitation of AS for those with pre-existing mental illness, as well as urge the creation of step-

down programs to help inmates adapt and become social again.

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Corrections Today is a highly researched, focused source in regards to prison and jail

circumstances. Since it is focused solely on our US corrections system, it makes it a more

credible and reliable source, with much research backing it. Morgan wrote this article to address

the questions about solitary, and to report on research they had instigated because of these

questions. Morgan finds credibility through not only being an expert, but sticking to facts for the

majority of the article, and arguing both sides of the debate.

This article comes in handy to provide counter-argument as well for my paper. Though

there’s many results in these tests that can back other sources, it shows some inconclusiveness of

data, therefore making the research more credible. Not everything is going to argue that solitary

is completely wrong or inhumane, otherwise it would likely not exist. There are reasons why

solitary has not been stopped in our prisons, and I need to include that in my paper, in order to

make a complete argument over why it should be limited.