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The International Red Cross has expressed concern of ‘significant problems’ with U.S. confinement techniques, and U.S. prison policies have faced mounting legal challenges. America detention system is far below the basic minimum standards for treatment of prisoners under international law. The United States' increasingly harsh treatment of its civilian prison population in maximum-security prisons ("supermax facilities") nationwide has caused an international human rights concern. America’s solitary confinement practices contravene international treaty law, violate established international norms, and do not represent sound foreign policy.

Dr. Eisenman, a Art History professor and activist, who is involved in many “stop max” movements centered in Illinois, studies solitary confinement and explains its eventual decline. Since the 1800’s solitary confinement was practiced in the penitentiary systems and its implementation and popularity at various prisons grew through out the centuries. The practice of solitary confinement grew partly because of stigmatizing language used to refer to certain prisoners like ‘the worst of the worst,’ which became a form of “self-justifying the logic of torture”. Yet, as the use of solitary confinement progressed, public discourse around solitary confinement transitioned from a legitimate form of punishment to torture. Because many prisoners in solitary confinement suffered severe mental and physical illnesses, Eisenman describes that by the end of the nineteenth century “prisoner isolation and sensory deprivation were widely understood to be forms of torture”. Therefore, human rights groups condemned the use of solitary confinement or ‘supermax’ systems, and national and local ‘stop max’ movements have initiated in America and worldwide to stop the use of solitary confinement. There are many radical American organizations campaigning and advocating for prisoners' rights and against solitary confinement.

Despite the debate and literature about the psychological effects solitary confinement has on prisoners, the government and prison administrators have very few intentions of ending solitary confinement or security housing units. Solitary confinement becomes a social issue because inmates will lose important skills to survive in society; “some will lose the ability impose internal organization on their daily routines, jeopardizing their prison adjustment. Others will suffer the loss of emotional control…”. Most of the inmates in secure housing units are minorities and the psychological effects that solitary confinement has on them will ensure that they may become “functionally excluded from living socially productive lives”. Because most of the inmates in solitary confinement are minorities, the issue of racialization of space and social/racial justice is contended in the prison system's use of solitary confinement.

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