Dr. Atul Gawande: Solitary Confinement is Torture

[EFerrari]

Dr. Atul Gawande, associate professor at Harvard School of Public Health and is a practicing surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He’s also a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. He is the author of three books; the most recent is The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.

The physical and psychological effects experienced by people held for extended periods in solitary confinement is a topic Dr. Atul Gawande has written extensively about. Yesterday, four prisoners in the supermax Ohio State Penitentiary launched a hunger strike to protest being held for more than 17 years years in solitary confinement. The alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, has also been held in solitary confinement for much of the past seven months. "People experience solitary confinement as even more damaging than physical torture," says Dr. Gawande.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/5/dr_atul_gawande_solitary_confinement_is

Transcript should be up in an hour or so. This is the doctor who wrote "Hellhole", the NYer article quoted in Greenwald's discussion of Manning's confinement.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande

[RandomThoughts]

1. If done by man it is not a hell hole.

That is often a claim made to make many people see the label and think they should be treated that way.

Although many people think people should not be in hellish conditions, some people use that term not to think on compassion, but as an excuse to break empathy.

[EFerrari]

8. Actually, isn't hell a human creation?

We have no evidence it isn't. :)

[RandomThoughts]

10. Good clairification there.

My meaning was that if it is done by one person against another person. If you can show it is someone doing it to themselves that makes more sense.

Although evil tries to say that the wrong they do, is actually something you do to yourself.

And example of evil doing that is.
Just hurt people and steal and you can be rich, your not wanting to steal is you doing it to yourself, because you wont do what it takes to be rich.

That is an example of someone trying to say some set of conditions they set around a person is not the problem, but the person not agreeing with bad or joining what they know is not better. Then there are some groups that say doing wrong is about being able to do wrong as a gift of grace, that say forgiveness is a blank check to be mean, or crucifying Christ by making him pay everyday without listening or feeling.

Side note, many people have wealth, or help people without doing those things.

[robcon]

2. Solitary confinement is an earned punishment, IMO, in most cases.

There are people who are dangerous to others. The need to be confined in solitary.

[EFerrari]

3. This doc said that in the 80s, the US hardly used it at all

where now it's widely used in this country. What changed? The rise of private prisons, that's all. People didn't suddenly become more violent in the last 30 years.

[robcon]

5. Prisoners have become more violent since the 80's

The rise of prison gangs has increased the violence immensely.

[EFerrari]

7. Gangs in prisons

don't mean prisoners are more violent, evolution doesn't work that quickly. It means management went into the toilet.

[stray cat]

4. The general prison population is better in all instances?

soliatary in some instances is safer for the inmate and in others is safer than letting someone out of solitary who is a danger to others. It may not be the case with Manning but the current claim is it is always torture

[EFerrari]

6. Kick

[EFerrari]

9. .