Solitary detention = torture?

[Cain]

I'm not so sure I'd be willing to go that far.  On the other hand, the scientific consensus on the effects of solitary confinement seem pretty clear.

I bring this up because Glenn Greenwald is making the case that Bradley Manning, accused of giving the Wikileaks data to Julian assange but not found guilty yet by any court, is being held under conditions considered torturous and barbaric:

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime.  Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months -- and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait -- under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture.  Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning's detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.

Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems.  He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a "Maximum Custody Detainee," the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement.  For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell.  Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions.  For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch).  For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs.  Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not "like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole," but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, isolated entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.

In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado:  all without so much as having been convicted of anything.  And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig's medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.

Just by itself, the type of prolonged solitary confinement to which Manning has been subjected for many months is widely viewed around the world as highly injurious, inhumane, punitive, and arguably even a form of torture.  In his widely praised March, 2009 New Yorker article -- entitled "Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?" -- the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande assembled expert opinion and personal anecdotes to demonstrate that, as he put it, "all human beings experience isolation as torture."  By itself, prolonged solitary confinement routinely destroys a person's mind and drives them into insanity.  A March, 2010 article in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law explains that "solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture."

For that reason, many Western nations -- and even some non-Western nations notorious for human rights abuses -- refuse to employ prolonged solitary confinement except in the most extreme cases of prisoner violence.  "It's an awful thing, solitary," John McCain wrote of his experience in isolated confinement in Vietnam. "It crushes your spirit."  As Gawande documented: "A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam . . . reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered."  Gawande explained that America's application of this form of torture to its own citizens is what spawned the torture regime which President Obama vowed to end:

This past year, both the Republican and the Democratic Presidential candidates came out firmly for banning torture and closing the facility in Guantánamo Bay, where hundreds of prisoners have been held in years-long isolation. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain, however, addressed the question of whether prolonged solitary confinement is torture. . . .

This is the dark side of American exceptionalism. . . . Our willingness to discard these standards for American prisoners made it easy to discard the Geneva Conventions prohibiting similar treatment of foreign prisoners of war, to the detriment of America's moral stature in the world.  In much the same way that a previous generation of Americans countenanced legalized segregation, ours has countenanced legalized torture. And there is no clearer manifestation of this than our routine use of solitary confinement . . . .

It's one thing to impose such punitive, barbaric measures on convicts who have proven to be violent when around other prisoners; at the Supermax in Florence, inmates convicted of the most heinous crimes and who pose a threat to prison order and the safety of others are subjected to worse treatment than what Manning experiences.  But it's another thing entirely to impose such conditions on individuals, like Manning, who have been convicted of nothing and have never demonstrated an iota of physical threat or disorder.

In 2006, a bipartisan National Commission on America's Prisons was created and it called for the elimination of prolonged solitary confinement.  Its Report documented that conditions whereby "prisoners end up locked in their cells 23 hours a day, every day. . . is so severe that people end up completely isolated, living in what can only be described as torturous conditions."  The Report documented numerous psychiatric studies of individuals held in prolonged isolation which demonstrate "a constellation of symptoms that includes overwhelming anxiety, confusion and hallucination, and sudden violent and self-destructive outbursts."  The above-referenced article from the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law states:  "Psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis."

[LMNO]

I'd agree that extended solitary confinement can be incredibly mentally stressful, and may do long-term psychological damage.

I'd also agree that it's bullshit that this is being done to Manning.

[Cain]

Yeah, I guess.  I'm just rather suspicious towards claims of structural violence, as a rule, as they can be overextended.  On the other hand, if you have someone in your power and you deny them access to food, water or sleep, that counts as a form of torture too, so the logic seems fairly sound.

[Adios]

I don't understand why he can't exercise. No pillows or blankets?

I don't know how the other inmates would view him. It may be that he's safer in solitaty, even if that isn't why they have him there.

Once, in a country called America, you couldn't hold a person without charging them, and then they had a right to a speedy trial. I understand his civilian lawyers have real difficulty seeing him.

[Jenne]

I asked my dad about his time in solitary.  He had a few weeks where he was in a 9'x9' cell, alone, and only saw folks when they brought him mail, escorted him somewhere or brought his food.  It was all because of a paperwork glitch when he got his sentence reduced so he could go to minimum security.

I asked him the day he got out (only a couple of weeks ago, damn!) if solitary was the hardest time he did, and he said with some surprise that no, it wasn't.  He said the hardest time was at Centinela, where a bunch of hardened criminals were housed, and it was hot and crowded (the first time I visited him in there was the experience that led me to write "When Your Dad's in Prison"), and he was in General Pop for the first time.

That's when he got shook down and got into a fight because his skinhead bunkmate found out he had been in protective custody and wanted to start shit with him.  He got kidney damage from that fight and maced in the face when the guard saw it happen.  But the old man defended himself, and that fucker didn't mess with him again.

He said he got to read and meditate and make a life plan for himself while in solitary.  Something he executed with dogged precision and that's why he's out now.  He put himself on a path to getting out soon.  But he had that luxury--most in solitary aren't there awaiting some red tape decision they know will set them free faster, so his mindset was probably somewhat different than your average solitary confinement prisoner.

[The Johnny]

Im sure the effects of conventional solitary vary upon different people because of their different tendencies. For example, someone with narcissistic or hysteric tendencies would suffer a lot, because a lot of its fulfillment is derived from the interaction of others; on the other hand, people that are within the Asperger's spectrum or are schizoid wouldnt seem to be that much of a problem.

Now, Manning isnt under conventional solitary, because he cant do anything but wait to die, cant exersice, read or have any type of activity it seems. Under this type of confinement, id consider it torture.

[Jenne]

Yeah, but that's a whole other level of solitary--I think most solitary confinements, the ones that are long-term, allow 1 hour/day of exercise, reading material, etc.

My dad's cell, as he described it, wasn't what you see in the movies, either...it had bars all around so he can see people passing by.  So he was in like a goldfish bowl, I think.  He said the hardest thing about it was not having room to move around, esp when they had to put chains on him to take him out and search him, etc.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Of course it's fucking torture.  People require human contact and information to function.

This is being done extra-judically, too.  Manning hasn't been convicted, nor has he done anything while in custody to warrant solitary.

This is being done as a message to others.  Manning will be dead or insane before this time next year, and that's entirely intentional.

[BabylonHoruv]

I don't understand why he can't exercise. No pillows or blankets?

I don't know how the other inmates would view him. It may be that he's safer in solitaty, even if that isn't why they have him there.

Once, in a country called America, you couldn't hold a person without charging them, and then they had a right to a speedy trial. I understand his civilian lawyers have real difficulty seeing him.

He is under the Joint Military Code, which is fairly different from the civilian criminal code.

[Requia ☣]

Yeah, I guess.  I'm just rather suspicious towards claims of structural violence, as a rule, as they can be overextended.  On the other hand, if you have someone in your power and you deny them access to food, water or sleep, that counts as a form of torture too, so the logic seems fairly sound.

Under US law, causing long term psychological damage is torture, so it seems a perfectly valid claim to me.

[the last yatto]

Bill of rights still doesn't apply to military personal

[Requia ☣]

Torture laws do.

[Juana]

Dr. M. Meltzer, former Chief Medical Officer at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary contributed his observations of psychiatric disturbances among prisoners exposed to punitive solitary confinement at Alcatraz. These prisoners were rarely confined for periods beyond one week. (Meltzer, 1956) Despite this, Dr. Meltzer described acute psychotic breakdowns among prisoners so confined...

"In 1988,...in...a class-action challenging the confinement of a small group of women in a subterranean security housing unit at the Federal Penitentiary in Lexington, Kentucky, I had the opportunity to interview several women...These women had been convicted of having committed politically motivated crimes, were all highly educated, and had a history of relatively strong psychological functioning prior to their confinement...[E]ach of them demonstrated significant psychopathological reactions to their prolonged confinement in a setting of severe environmental and social isolation."

Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement by Dr. Stuart Graussian in Madrid v Gomez
It's torture. End of story.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

Bill of rights still doesn't apply to military personal

Fixed.

[the last yatto]

Torture laws do.

Not until the supreme court says they do