Kupers, Dr. Terry Allen: Solitary Confinement: Locked Away with No Human Contact
An estimated 100,000 people are held in solitary confinement in the United States. The conditions in which they live are abysmal. They have little or no contact human contact.
Often they are kept in dark, cold, wet cells eight feet by 10 feet in size. Many suffer from mental illness prior to or as a result of solitary confinement. This results in significant long term damage to the individuals and our society as a whole.
Dr. Terry Allen Kupers, a forensic psychiatrist, is the author of “Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We can Abolish It.” In this first of a two part series on solitary confinement, Kupers shares interviews with prisoners who have been raped, subdued with immobilizing gas, beaten by prison guards and whose mental and physical health needs have been ignored. He has found that prisoners of color are much more likely to be held in solitary confinement than are white prisoners. Kupers argues that solitary confinement is tantamount to torture, and per se violates the constitutional prohibition of cruel or unusual punishment.
When Dr. Terry Kupers and I visit by phone from his home in Oakland, California on February 11, 2018, we began the first of two conversations when I asked him to define forensic psychiatry, and the background of solitary confinement.
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