Talk:Solitary confinement

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 April 2019 and 7 June 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): TF951497642. Peer reviewers: Melissaglvn.

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NPOV
Note the comment "purported national security risks". If this doesn't reek of liberal bias, I'm not sure what does. Remove the purported? Replace with "on suspicion of" or something that delineates uncertainty without loading it full of antirepublican antiguantanamo indoctrinationist propoganda. MatthewWhite (talk) 18:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the problem is that quite often, what those "national security risks" are has not been clearly spelled out, so they are "purported" and not publicly substantiated. I also think your remark betrays your own bias. There's nothing in this article naming the Republican party or Gitmo. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:44, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * No, that is not a problem, and it is POV. In this case, the purpose of solitary confinement is to hold a prisoner incommunicado who poses a national security risk, not one who "purportedly" does. The fact that in some cases the prisoner might not actually pose the stated risk does not change the purpose, and rather represents a misuse of the prison system.
 * This section seems to have been deleted so I can't tell where in the article you were referencing, but to resolve future disputes: it is very hard, if not impossible, to establish objectively that someone poses a national security risk. However, the term "purportedly" is vague.  Perhaps this sort of problem could be remedied, better fitting within NPOV, by describing how or why a person has been deemed a security risk.  For example, "ruled by a court to pose a national security risk" would be very different from "deemed by prison staff to pose a national security risk".  By clarifying in cases like like this, who exacty has determined that the person is a security risk, we could remove a vague word like "purportedly" and make the article more objective and NPOV.  Cazort (talk) 14:20, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I also have a problem with the entire criticism section. The fact that criticisms of solitary confinement are mentioned without a single critic listed is simply bad form, unencyclopedic, and not particularly useful. The fact that far less space is devoted to the reasons for the continued use of solitary makes the article extremely unbalanced, especially since in the status quo solitary is used all over the world.


 * Obviously this article is just a stub, but I think it is a POV and unbalanced stub at that, and I hope to see that problem improved first. Eebster the Great (talk) 05:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Crazy bias
This article has crazy bias. I'm gonna tag this with npov. No mention of responses to criticisms or an NPOV discussion of the positive effects of SHUs. I'm no fan of solitary confinement; in fact, I think it's worse than the death penalty on the negative human rights scale. But this article needs to be fair. hello, i'm a member  |  talk to me!  01:19, 5 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I made an attempt to cut the bias out, moved everything having to do with morality into a separated criticism section, and killed every weasel word that I could find. Unfortunately, the 'Use' section is now very stubbish, requiring more information. Added a lawstub template as well as a globalize template, since nearly all of the (limited) information is from America. Still needs mention of positive criticisms of the practice, but at least it isn't screaming "solitary is torture" anymore. Sirpunchula (talk) 04:57, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * There's still a heavy bias in the "use" section with no citations. "Prisoners who are put into solitary confinement often suffer mentally," "inadequate medical and mental health treatment" but no citation to back any of that.  Just personal opinion.  (73.176.38.34 (talk) 21:34, 27 September 2014 (UTC))


 * This article is still one-sided. It has no actual historical information about solitary confinement (merely the historical issues solitary has supposedly had). It has no identification of what constitutes solitary: Is it a dark hole or a regular cell? Do all prisons have a standard design or do they differ? Is solitary confinement practiced throughout the world? It is better for this article to be two paragraphs and contain useful information than to read like a one-sided diatribe against solitary confinement. The criticisms section should be limited to two paragraphs- one talking about solitary and its effects on inmates preferably with some real life (not first person) examples of how people were harmed in the long-term by it (i.e., he went in a thief and came out a mass murderer) and another talking about its effects on teens using a similar example. To be balanced, there should also be a section of equal length detailing the benefits. Right now, the main article that reads for numerous paragraphs is repetitive and can be summed up in one simple sentence: The author of this article hates solitary confinement and passionately believes it causes all sorts of psychological side-effects (including ones that may be fake), as well as increasing recidivism. This article on solitary confinement cites Charles Dickens!!! Yes, it was a book by him about a trip he took to America, but it was also an opinion piece. Although there are 83 citations, most are like this and need to be cleaned up: the majority are opinion pieces or (and I cringe at this) articles published in scientific journals that used opinion pieces in their citations! I have looked at several and found no actual scientific research where an author looked at psychological diagnosis and treatment to compare how these changed before and after solitary. When you are dealing with a prison population, you cannot simply say that they had psychological problems and solely attribute that to solitary confinement. The majority of prisons today have replaced the sanitariums of old and more than 50% of their population is already mentally ill (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/mhppji.pdf) when they go into prison. I am sure there is real scientific research out there that shows solitary confinement is detrimental, but this article doesn't cite it- or its lost in the slew of garbage citations. 2601:245:C100:F500:1D10:81CB:4EEA:446E (talk) 11:56, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Solitary confinement in Canada
Not sure if this should be here at all tbh, no references at all and clearly stated as being 'Based on this writer's personal experience', there is nothing of note there except possibly the statement that nearly 10% of prisoners are in Solitary Confinement (not even sure of the validity of this statement). 82.2.221.53 (talk) 09:43, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Usage and criticism
Should this section be balanced with a justification or benefit section?--DrRisk13 (talk) 19:22, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Wurmbrand
The case is said to be renowned. Where? By whom? While 14 years of solitary confinement are cruel, far worse things happened in the world. And where is the cultural reference? There is little encyclopedic material in the paragraph. Even the wording (among the five greatest Romanians when being on place five) sounds more like an advertisement. -- Zz (talk) 22:52, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Transferred the following: One of the most notable and renowned cases of solitary confinement comes from the story of pastor Richard Wurmbrand who ranks fifth among the greatest Romanians of all time according to the Mari Români poll. In 1948, Wurmbrand was imprisoned for 14 years and sentenced to solitary confinement for his involvement in underground churches. Wurmbrand endured years of solitary torture, both mentally and physically all the while composing hundreds of sermons, delivered nightly to an unseen (fictional) congregation. He later committed them to memory by summarizing them in rhymes. Wurmbrand authored 18 books about his solitary confinement experience and traveled across the world forming what would be known as The Voice of the Martyrs. -- Zz (talk) 13:54, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Papillon
As far as cultural references go, I think a better example could be Henri Charrière's story in Papillon. Any objection to me starting an "In fiction" section including this? -- &oelig; &trade; 22:55, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old POV template with a dormant discussion, per the instructions on that template's page:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

If editors are continuing to work toward resolution of any issue and I missed it, however, please feel free to restore. Cheers, -- Khazar2 (talk) 02:15, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

major POV problems
I don't know whether they were here when the POV tag was removed, but a few sections have been inserted here that are far from neutral. The "Youth of Color" section seems to be little more than someone's desire to whine about minority children being put in solitary. I say "whine" because the section consists largely of conjecture or generalities that basically amount to the observation that the proportion of minority children placed in solitary is large, just like the proportion of minority kids in every area of the juvenile justice system, which is an obvious thing that says nothing about discrimination in the area of solitary confinement: if the majority of a population are part of a particular ethnic group and a similar majority are subjected to a type of punishment, this does not suggest bias. This is not to say that there's no bias in the juvenile justice system, or that solitary is appropriate to "youth of color" or other youths, only that the section seems to provide no real reason to believe that "youth of color" is a serious issue unique from that of youths in general. The section on "Disciplinary Segregation in New York" takes things much, much further. The entire section does not read as an impartial, encyclopedic description of information, but rather as heated propaganda against the practice. "There is nothing special about a confined space..." "Inmates called solitary confinement 'the box'... summarizing the physical features that a place like this is, which ultimately is torture" "New Yorkers may be unconscious of the torture in their own backyards and that their living with “black sites.”" These are just a few major examples of the contents of this section; there is no neutrality here, just passionate propaganda against what some editors feel to be an injustice. Also, there needs to be more justification for the presence of sections dealing entirely with individual states. It doesn't really matter whether solitary confinement is as bad as described here, this is no more neutral than if someone posted on the abortion article "Abortion is ultimately murder of innocent lives" or "people may not realize the slaughter happening in their own backyards..." (NOTE: I only used abortion because it's contentious and these approximations of the statements demonstrates that such material or sections would be removed immediately for bias). I cannot describe all the POV issues on this article, but there are many and this page needs a thorough review and major edits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.30.50.240 (talk) 03:43, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * It looks like a lot of this has been removed already since your comment. I also removed three sentences from the "Disciplinary segregation in New York" section.  I can't easily view those sources cited so I don't know how much I can verify but that section may need more gutting.  Cazort (talk) 14:28, 17 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I also am not seeing a systematic bias in any one way...rather, I'm seeing a hodge-podge of unsourced or poorly-written statements that don't seem to harmonize with each other, which may reflect different editors with different points of view. I'm not sure this is a neutrality issue so much as just a general poor quality problem.


 * Overall I think that there are only small problems with this article, nothing to warrant a neutrality disputed tag. The main sections of the article seem well-referenced to me, and I don't see any active discussion in many months, and most of the discussion is much older than that, so I'm removing the tag.  We can keep making incremental improvements to the article.  Cazort (talk) 14:28, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, regarding sections on individual states, I think that if there's enough verifiable material from reliable sources to write this, then the topic is notable--if the sections are growing too big, we can spin them off into their own articles. People write a lot about these topics so I am suspecting that there may be enough for full articles on specific states for the larger states like New York or California.  I would agree that it would create imbalance to have a very large section on a state like New York in the article as-is.  Cazort (talk) 14:32, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

NPOV Issue
The Criticism section, instead of summarizing various criticisms of solitary confinement, independently lambasts the practice; e.g., "[solitary confinement] is not sound policy". I also question its blanket claims; e.g., that US solitary confinement generally violates international human rights law. Let's neutralize this article. Duxwing (talk) 08:06, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Collection of US-specific parts into one section
I've collected all the US-specific parts of the article into one section.

Very strange content in CA section
The CA section seems likely to me to be original research, especially the phrase:

"If a door is inadvertently opened (frequently called a day room), allowing an inmate unrestrained access to another inmate or officer, the inmates may shake hands and return to their cells, or fight. If the inmates fight, the fight will not end until officers use force to stop the fight."

Shake hands? Why would those be the only two options? Is it physically impossible for a fight to end without officer intervention? This is really nonsensical.

It was introduced with this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solitary_confinement&diff=prev&oldid=573270396. It seems to me that most content in that edit is suspicious and I think it would be best to revert it. Capitalsigma (talk) 05:47, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Torture NPOV
The section on torture makes mostly opinion-based assertions taken essentially straight from this reference: Vasiliades, Elizabeth (2005). "Solitary Confinement and International Human Rights: Why the US Prison System Fails Global Standards" (PDF). Amer. U. Int'l Law Rev. 21: 71–101

The reference is nothing but an extended commentary, and there is apparently nothing scientific about the claims the author makes that e.g. U.S. policies "contravene international treaty law, violate established international norms, and do not represent sound policy." IMO the only useful fact from this reference is the observation that the Red Cross has concerns over U.S. policy (but the Red Cross statement should be quoted directly for this anyway). Moreover, the extended discussion of U.S. policy is inappropriate for an article about solitary confinement in general. Without additional discussion of the connection between torture and solitary confinement globally, I think this entire section should be removed. --128.12.252.4 (talk) 19:00, 25 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Deleting the entire section is obviously too much since there's only part that's based on the Vasiliades reference, which itself is a reliable source but must I agree must be cited as a legal commentary, i.e., "According to Elizabeth Vasiliades ...". At that point the rest of the text from that source should probably be tightened up into one extended sentence to avoid undue weight. The first sentence cited by her about the Red Cross is almost verbatim from her article's intro and is based on her citations of other media – we'll delete that and find some direct Red Cross source that talks about U.S. prison conditions and solitary in particular.
 * Another problematic source in that section is Gawande's New Yorker article, since it is being cited for a study that it itself references (but gives no details on). On further inspection, its omission of detail on the study is rather unfortunate, as the New Yorker article was cited by even a published textbook as a source on facts of the study which was still unidentified. Of course the magic of Google found the study with the 57 subjects: Visual evoked potentials in relation to factors of imprisonment in detention camps (1996). Note that the New Yorker got the date wrong (the prisoners were released in 1992 and several initial medical studies, cited in the journal article, were done in 92 and 93) – usually it's the editor's fault and not the writer when there's fatal technical miswordings like that.
 * Finally, the first clause in the final sentence of the section is cites Grassian (2006) as an implied causation to a 2001 ruling. Anyway, I'll fix all of the above. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:49, 26 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I added some stuff from the UN on torture, with references. Hope it helps with the whole neutrality NPOV.Refernces used:
 * If I did something wrong, thank you for the corrections. Primemountain (talk) 14:10, 20 September 2016 (UTC)


 * It's been quite some time since new sources have been included and it seems there isn't a dispute on the NPOV anymore. Maybe it's appropiate to remove the tag? --Jamez42 (talk) 02:49, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Removed as stale (t · c)  buidhe  00:35, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

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"Environment is a factor" section heading doesn't fit Wikipedia's tone
"Significance of environmental factors" would be better. Maybe even merge it with other sections around it? Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything (talk) 13:20, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Women of color in solitary confinement
This section is nonsensical. It adds nothing to the readers understanding of solitary confinement, and belongs in an article dedicated the the experience of women and minorities in the prison system. It has been tacked on the end, and does not improve the quality of the article in any way. For example:

>Women in solitary confinement are treated as less than human, in ways which parallel not only the larger societal degradation of women but also that of people of color. The sexually abusive nature of their interactions with the guards, and the denial of medical care, social contact, and resources, can be seen as racialized.

This claim is made with absolutely no citation whatsoever, is clearly quite opinionated, and is only tangentially relevant to the concept of solitary confinement- the same issues present themselves in the general prison population and as the author states, society at large, and is not specific to solitary confinement. Hence a dedicated section in this article is unwarranted. It serves to cause confusion, and turn the article from a neutral, fact-based read about solitary confinement into a practical opinion piece, with tenuous links between the subject matter and the information provided, and vast reaches in logic- for example, it reads: "Women who are put into solitary confinement are often isolated because of actions that challenge dominant perspectives of femininity". Where is the evidence for this? Is this an established fact? Possibly, however there is certainly nothing in the section to back it up.

I'm not necessarily debating the content of this section, I'm not claiming it to be either true or false. It just simply is only tangentially related to the main topic, has numerous claims made as fact without citation, is emotive and opinionated, and belongs in a separate wiki article dedicated to the experience of women and minorities in prison, as the vast majority of issues presented are, again, present in the prison system/society at large and are not specific to people in solitary confinement. A dedicated section of the article on this topic is unwarranted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.93.241.147 (talk) 21:58, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Lack of info for proponents section
While this article provides lots of details about different facets of solitary confinement, it fails to contribute an equal amount of information regarding proponents for this topic. This may cause readers to feel a bias in the article, and also just doesn't create a good ratio of information to categories. TF951497642 (talk) 08:34, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * See WP:FALSEBALANCE. (t · c)  buidhe  01:28, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Unreliable sources
Multiple citations in the article link to online newspaper sources or media outlets that don't seem to meet the criteria for credible sources, or at least certainly not scholarly: 1, 2, 5, 20, 21, 23, 26, 31, 32, 39, 45, 51, 55, 70, 85, and 86. TF951497642 (talk) 08:39, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Solitary confinement
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Solitary confinement's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "ABC": From Hypertension:  From La Tumba (Caracas):  

Reference named "USsenate": From Bolivarian Intelligence Service:  From La Tumba (Caracas):  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 15:16, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

origins of the word?
«Incommunicado» sounds like Spanish. But apparently it is not. Where is the word coming from? --Werfur (talk) 16:40, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Counter-arguments section
This section misrepresented two outdated studies as if they are currently accepted scientific results. That is not the case. According to the 2017 review: "Although the empirical consensus on the harmfulness of solitary confinement is broad and deep, there is one notable, albeit highly controversial exception to this generalization. The so-called Colorado Study of one year in administrative segregation (O’Keefe et al. 2010, 2013) purported to find that solitary confinement not only did not put prisoners at a significant risk ofharm but actually enhanced the psychological well-being of many of them (including many whowere mentally ill). As soon as the study was released, critics from a variety of disciplines identified a range of very serious methodological problems that appeared to completely discredit its findings"

Therefore, I removed the section (t · c)  buidhe  01:27, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

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