Solitary confinement

The isolation (insulation adhesive) is a form of detention , in which a detainee within a prison or a similar device is denied contact with other inmates, to the outside world and sometimes to types of employment. Solitary confinement is mostly used to prevent the flow of information as well as to prevent smuggling and collusion between prisoners. It can also be used as a punishment for breaking rules.

Solitary confinement is controversial because of its effects on inmates and is also viewed by critics as an extermination detention and a form of torture .

Effects

The acute and long-term, sometimes chronic, consequences of solitary confinement differ depending on the length, type and extent as well as the psychological constitution of the prisoner. In investigations of prisoners before, during and after an extraordinarily long solitary confinement, u. a. the following effects are documented as "classic phenomena of solitary confinement in the sense of sensory deprivation and social isolation" (Stöwsand in: Klusmeyer, 1985: 46):

• significant impairment of the functionality of the autonomic nervous system
  • significant disturbances in the hormonal balance
  • Impairment of organ functions
  • Missing menstruation in women without a physiological-organic, age- or pregnancy-related cause (secondary amenorrhea )
  • heightened sense, eat to have: Zynorexie / cravings , Hyperorexie , gluttony
  • in contrast, a decrease or absence of thirst
  • strong hot flashes and / or cold feelings not to a corresponding change in the ambient temperature or to a disease ( fever , chills o. ä.) can be traced back

• significant impairment of perception and cognitive performance (which creates problems especially with regard to court proceedings / criminal defense )
  • severe disturbance in the processing of perceptions
  • severe body sensation disorders
  • severe general difficulty concentrating
  • severe difficulties up to the inability to read or to comprehend what has been read, to understand it and to bring it into a meaningful context
  • severe difficulties up to the inability to write or to process thoughts in writing ( agraphy / dysgraphy )
  • strong articulation / Verbalisierungsschwierigkeiten that particularly in the areas of - syntax , grammar show and word choice and to aphasia , Aphrasie and agnosia can range
  • severe difficulty or inability to follow conversations (proven to be due to a slowdown in the function of the primary acoustic cortex of the temporal lobes due to lack of stimulation)

• Other impairments
  • Conducting self-talk to compensate for the acoustic and social lack of stimuli
  • significant loss of emotional intensity (e.g. towards relatives and friends)
  • Situationally euphoric feelings that later turn into a depressive mood

• Long-term health effects
  • social contact disorders up to the inability to enter into emotionally close and long-term partnerships
  • depressions
  • Impairment of self-esteem
  • Return of the detention situation in dreams
  • Blood pressure disorders that require treatment
  • skin diseases requiring treatment
  • Failure to regain particular cognitive skills (e.g. in mathematics ) that were mastered prior to solitary confinement

In particular, the long-term consequences of solitary confinement show various points of overlap with the symptoms of the so-called survivor syndrome , which can be observed in many former prisoners who were incarcerated in concentration camps. In the United States, SHU syndrome is known to occur in prisoners who have been housed in secure housing units, and which has striking similarities to post-traumatic stress syndrome .

therapy

The treatment of people who suffer from the consequences of too long imprisonment under isolation conditions is partially possible with medication if they have physical symptoms (unless they are primarily due to psychosomatic diseases). Psychological and psychosomatic consequences require psychotherapy from a therapist who specializes in the treatment of psychologically traumatized people.

History, Enlightenment and Resistance

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Although isolation and deprivation have been used for punitive purposes for centuries, solitary confinement was only introduced as a form of punishment within the prison system in the US state of Pennsylvania in the early 19th century, around 1821, and has been continuously researched and developed since then. The prisoners were not allowed to work at the time and were only allowed to receive a clergyman. The system was still called Penitent at the time .

At that time, free thinkers and Quakers advocated the penitentiary as a supposedly humane alternative to the death penalty , mutilation and corporal punishment .

As early as 1842, the writer Charles Dickens protested against solitary confinement and, since it did not leave any clearly visible physical traces, described it as white torture and as fundamentally worse than any primarily physical torture .

For almost five years - from 1894 to 1899 - the French officer Alfred Dreyfus , wrongly convicted of treason and banished to an island - see Dreyfus affair - suffered solitary confinement . After this time he could hardly speak at first.

The Supermax prison type has been in use in the USA since 1983 . This provides for the detention of prisoners in complete solitary confinement for 23 hours a day - sometimes even with constant lighting. In some US prisons there are individual departments that have a supermax character. These are usually referred to as Secure Housing Units (SHU). There was also isolation in the Northern Irish civil war against Catholic activists in so-called H-Blocks . In Turkey , prisoners and their relatives have been fighting for years against the legalization of solitary confinement through the introduction of so-called type F prisons , which adopt the standards developed in Germany for the isolation of prisoners.

In Latin America and Spain, solitary confinement is primarily known as incomunicado (dt .: contact lock ).

Situation in Germany

In Germany, solitary confinement is not expressly regulated by law, but only clearly delimited solitary confinement (see, inter alia, Section 88 (2) No. 3, Section 89 of the StVollzG ).

In Germany, the term “solitary confinement” was partly related to the conditions of detention of members of the Red Army faction in the 1970s and the like. a. in the correctional facility in Stuttgart .

To this day, solitary confinement has been maintained for years in individual cases. The case of an inmate in the Bruchsal prison who was isolated for 23 hours a day between 1996 and 2006 is known. In the JVA Celle a case is documented in which an inmate was isolated from other inmates for over 15 years. The prisoner was finally certified to be harmless and he was released from prison in November 2011 after 16 years. Representatives of the federal government said in a court hearing that it was common practice to place prisoners in such cells without clothes to protect themselves against self-harm as long as the state of excitement persists.

For prisoners who are imprisoned for terrorist offenses, the German Contact Blocking Act allows isolation in the form of a contact block. In 1978 the Federal Constitutional Court unanimously found it to be constitutional.

Situation in Turkey

In Turkey, the police or the gendarmerie are allowed to interrogate a prisoner without having any contact with the outside world.

Since July 2, 2012, Article 10 of Act 3713 (Act to Combat Terrorism, abbreviated to: Anti-Terrorism Act, ATG) describes rules and exceptions. Here, Paragraph ç states that the maximum length of police detention for crimes covered by this Act is 48 hours. Paragraph e states that these suspects have no right to legal assistance for the first 24 hours.

Legal evaluation

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The incommunicado detention as such and thus their conditions are legally not enshrined in the rule. The placement of prisoners in isolation is internationally outlawed by human rights organizations and referred to as a method of torture , but is probably used worldwide in official and unofficial penal systems without a legal basis .

See also

• Contact lock
• Camera silens
• Hunger strike
• Solitary confinement

literature

• U. Ahrens (Ed.): Close the cupboard door immediately! Thirty-two drawings and a sculpture for solitary confinement. Drawn and modeled after descriptions by former isolation prisoners. Berlin 1986.
• Amnesty International's work on prison conditions in the Federal Republic of Germany for people suspected of or convicted of politically motivated crimes: isolation and solitary confinement. Amnesty international publications, Bonn 1980.
• PH Bakker Schut (ed.): Fatal shots - solitary confinement - encroachments on the law of defense. Berlin 1995.
• A. Birck, C. Pross, J. Lansen (eds.): The unspeakable - working with traumatized people in the treatment center for victims of torture in Berlin. Berlin 2002.
• W. Bungard: On the validity of research on social deprivation. In: Group Dynamics - Research and Practice. Issue 3, June 1977, pp. 170-185.
• A. Engels: Sensory deprivation - isolation equals torture or isolation equals therapy? In: Group Dynamics - Research and Practice. Issue 3, June 1977, pp. 163-170.
• J. Gross, L. Svab: Social isolation and sensory deprivation and their judicial-psychological aspects. Prague 1967.
• Gerhard Koenen: Vesper, Ensslin, Baader. Primal scenes of German terrorism. Cologne 2003.
• Committee against solitary confinement: death penalty in installments. Eco-Verlag, Zurich 1976, DNB 890774447 .
• L. Richter: The history of torture and execution: from ancient times to the present day. Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-85492-365-1 .
• Kurt Oesterle: Stammheim - the story of the law enforcement officer Horst Bubeck. ISBN 3-453-62007-0 .
• S. Teuns: Isolation / Sensory Deprivation - The programmed torture. In: Klaus Eschen u. a .: Torture in the FRG - On the situation of political prisoners (= course book. 32). Rotbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1973, OCLC 246216942 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Solitary confinement  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• www.gerd-koenen.de/pdf/Stammheim_revisited_Kommune_1103.pdf - about Horst Bubeck's book (PDF file; 23 kB)
• Where Evil Crouches - Dealing with Dangerous Prisoners. Reporter March 22, 2006.
• Shane Bauer: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons. Mother Jones, November / December 2012.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ in addition to this, special enforcement measures according to the StVollzG .
2. ^ Kai Schlieter: Solitary confinement in Germany - buried alive. the daily newspaper (taz) , February 24, 2011, accessed on March 13, 2011 . 
3. ↑ Inhuman: Naked placement in prison cell. on: linksnet.de , September 17, 2012.
4. ↑ The wording of the Terörle Mücadele Kanunu ( Memento of the original from 23 August 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (ATG) can be found on the website of the Ministry of Justice; Accessed August 22, 2016, PDF 210 kB. 

Please note the information on legal issues!