Scientific Experiments on the Effects of Solitary Confinement…

G.d'Annunzio •

It’s doesn’t rehabilitate anyone, it drives them insane. Quickly.

And remember: Outside of the USA, solitary confinement is considered as torture – it is not normal prison practice outside of America and third world countries.

It’s not a process that facilitates ‘rehabilitation’ – the longer people are in it, the less rehabitable they become.

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Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140514-how-extreme-isolation-warps-minds

“In the 1950s and 1960s, China was rumoured to be using solitary confinement to “brainwash” American prisoners captured during the Korean War, and the US and Canadian governments were all too keen to try it out. Their defence departments funded a series of research programmes that might be considered ethically dubious today.”

“In 2008, clinical psychologist Ian Robbins recreated Hebb’s experiment in collaboration with the BBC, isolating six volunteers for 48 hours in sound-proofed rooms in a former nuclear bunker. The results were similar. The volunteers suffered anxiety, extreme emotions, paranoia and significant deterioration in their mental functioning. They also hallucinated: a heap of 5,000 empty oyster shells; a snake; zebras; tiny cars; the room taking off; mosquitoes; fighter planes buzzing around.”

“Take the 25,000 inmates held in “super-maximum security” prisons in the US today. Without social interaction, supermax prisoners have no way to test the appropriateness of their emotions or their fantastical thinking, says Terry Kupers, a forensic psychiatrist at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, who has interviewed thousands of supermax prisoners. This is one of the reasons many suffer anxiety, paranoia and obsessive thoughts. Craig Haney, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a leading authority on the mental health of inmates in the US, believes that some of them purposefully initiate brutal confrontations with prison staff just to reaffirm their own existence – to remember who they are.”

Letters from Bill

G.d'Annunzio •

Today I received a batch of letters from Bill – whenever there is an impending trial his mail always gets delayed, because some person in the office  needs to photocopy and highlight any useful parts. Since everyone knows they do this (because the delay makes it obvious) the chances of anything useful appearing is substantially reduced and the whole process becomes a self-defeating exercise.

Points of interest:

  • On the 1st of July Bill mentions that he’ll ‘be “leaving the jail soon” – this is looking less and less likely every day and I doubt it’s going to happen. The later letters emphasis a growing awareness that once again, the efficiency of bureaucracy will fail to deliver.
  • Due to the situation with the mail, don’t send Bill anything but letters.
  • Bill sent through a list of books he wants, but I will put that up later since he may not be given any books people send at the moment.
  • Other than that Bill’s complaining of an assortment of medical symptoms which sound like chronic anaemia or possibly a liver/kidney disorder. Since he’s a vegetarian my best guess is that he currently has severe anaemia from the symptoms described.
  • Once again, he’s assuring me that the case is going well and he’ll win. Since I’ve now heard this on every occasion, this may just be unfounded optimism.
  • Then there is some mysterious product called ‘magic shave’ – as far as I can tell this is some nasty product designed to dissolve (yes, dissolve!) beards as an alternative to shaving. Obviously anything that dissolves hair is likely to be toxic, but according to Bill prisoners are supposed to put this stuff on their face to shave. When I googled it, the internet revealed lots of people complaining about chemical burns from it. Bill’s worried it may have adverse side effects – since it sounds like pure hydrochloric acid, my guess is very much so.
  • Other than that he’s been filling in time writing on history in the Middle Ages.

One day someone’s going to google all this and it will be revealed to be one of the most ludicrous series of trials in American history – man gets tortured in prison for the alleged writing of anonymous blog posts and emails which are quite obviously complete and utter bullshit regardless of who wrote them!

Once again, the USA spends more time concentrating on bullshit on the internet instead of solving its real problems. Perhaps it’s just a covert exercise in media distraction to cover up the real issues – bashing ‘fascists’ may prevent people looking too far into the problems with Russia and the failing economy. Or looking at the reason why school children go on shooting binges – something which never happens in other, civilized countries.

“Did the city of Flint just file for bankruptcy and is on the verge of utter collapse? Forget that, we have more important issues to deal with. God damned Fascists have been using the internet again, just let Flint starve like Detroit, or maybe just get wiped totally like New Orleans. Allocate all resources to the NSA to find gossip on Facebook.”

Please excuse my sardonicism, but America needs to realise that its greatest enemy is currently its own lack of economic and social priorities. When people starve and cities collapse, while enormous funds are apparently spent on the prospect that someone may by typing bullshit on the internet, it is an obvious misallocation of public funds.