OPINION

Isolation feeds mental illness and can lead to desperate acts, including self-mutilation and suicide. All while not rehabilitating inmates.

Fleet Maull | Opinion contributor

After five months in solitary confinement, a 32-year-old man suffering from mental illness began to self-mutilate.

The Broward County, Florida, inmate used the blade of a shaving razor to gruesomely cut off his penis before flushing it down the toilet, stating that he no longer needed it, according to 7 News Miami. The man was eventually placed in a mental institution.

Before entering solitary confinement, the inmate had been showing signs of mental distress. These signs should have been a warning for doctors, yet his mental health needs had been neglected by staff.

The September incident is one of many tragedies that have occurred in Broward County detention. The month before the mutilation, a psychiatric expert issued a report detailing the inadequacy of mental health staffing in county detention.

This tragedy demonstrates the dangers of placing human beings in isolation. Solitary confinement often either leads to mental illness or exacerbates preexisting mental health conditions. And the punishment does nothing to actually create a safer society.

Bebeto Matthews/AP

It's time to move beyond this archaic and barbaric punishment and begin implementing 21st century, evidenced-based treatment and education programs that will support offenders in returning to society.

Watching the mental breakdown

I've lived through solitary confinement. Fortunately, I had it easier than most.

I was placed in isolation twice: once when I was being transferred from a jail in Indiana to a maximum security federal prison in Missouri, and again while in federal prison for being late when guards started counting inmates (something they did multiple times a day to make sure everyone was in their cell).

In 1985, I started a 14-year sentence for drug smuggling, and my mind was already filled with turmoil over what I had done to my loved ones. I had deprived my son, then 9, of a relationship with his father. I felt miserable for letting down the people who loved and believed in me.

Each time I was placed in confinement, my mind would race with negative thoughts about my worth. I felt like my psyche had turned against me and was filled with self-hatred. Solitary was also incredibly noisy, and lights were kept on all day and night, making it impossible for me to sleep. The exhaustion often made me feel like I was drifting into a psychotic state.

I never hurt myself while in solitary, but I could certainly understand why someone would. Self-mutilation is often a desperate attempt to get out of what feels like a dangerous, unlivable situation. So is suicide — one of the leading killers of inmates today.

When I got out of solitary, I used the pain of being away from my son as motivation. I was determined to turn negatives in prison into positives, rack up points for good behavior and get out of there.

But during my time at Springfield's U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, I witnessed others who had been in solitary deteriorate. The prison hospital housed about 400 psychiatric patients, and I was a prisoner who worked with them.

I was a tutor at the prison school. I also led a meditation group and helped coordinate the prison's 12-step program. It was heartbreaking to see some of the men I came to know quite well ravaged by mental illness following a stint in isolation.

Solitary confinement acts as a prison within a prison. It's used not only to contain those who have become a threat to themselves or others, but also as punishment for those who break the rules.

But placing someone in isolation is life-threatening.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics, suicides accounted for more than a third of local jail deaths in 2014. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2014, involving 244,699 incarcerations in the New York City jail system covering a three-year period starting in 2010, found that prisoners punished with solitary confinement were more likely to commit suicide and physically harm themselves.

It's not unusual for an inmate to suffer from a mental illness. That condition in many cases might have contributed to their incarceration in the first place. Even otherwise healthy inmates placed in solitary confinement for long periods of time are at risk for significant psychological harm and mental illness.

Our whole approach to criminal justice is based on flawed and outdated ideas. In fact, a Florida study showed that nearly a quarter of inmates held in solitary confinement in a supermax prison committed a violent crime within three years of release. At least 95% of state prisoners will return to society. It's up to our criminal justice system to ensure that they will come back better than they were before.

Don't separate. Provide treatment.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy have proved effective in treating depression, addiction and various behavior disorders common among prisoners.

The current punishment model, which includes isolation, must be reconsidered. It offers no evidence of any deterrent or restorative success. Both restorative and transformative justice — with their focus on harm reduction, reparation, healing and transformation — offer sound alternatives that address the roots and causes of crime at both the individual and societal level.

The continued use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails is a sign of how out of touch our criminal justice system is with international human rights standards and the latest medical and behavioral science, which in no way supports this practice.

Our criminal justice system needs to embrace humane approaches to preventing harm and dedicate resources toward rehabilitating those who have engaged in harmful behaviors.