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 U.S. President Barack Obama recently banned solitary confinement for
juvenile offenders in the federal prison system, but most
incarcerated kids are housed in state and local facilities that
aren’t covered by this ban, Dr. Mikah Owen and Dr. Jeffrey Goldhagen
of the University of Florida note in an article in the journal
Pediatrics.
Extended periods of isolation are linked to a wide range of problems
in adults including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, social
withdrawal, insomnia, impaired vision, headaches and joint pain,
Owen said by email.
While the effects in children aren’t as clearly understood, they,
too likely suffer from depression and other mental health problems
resulting from solitary confinement.
“It’s not really a developmentally appropriate way to discipline
youth,” Owen added. “The primary goal of the juvenile justice system
should be to rehabilitate.”
Precise statistics on youth in solitary confinement are hard to come
by, but one report in 2010 found 35 percent of juvenile prisoners
reported being held in some type of isolation, Owen and Goldhagen
note.
More than half of kids in solitary confinement report being held in
these conditions for more than 24 hours at a time, they also note.
Children are even more emotionally vulnerable to the negative
effects of solitary confinement than adults because they are still
developing and have less resilience to draw on, said Dr. Ian Lambie,
a clinical psychologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand
who wasn’t involved in the article.
“Put bluntly, they experience a sense of hopelessness and complete
vulnerability, and a lack of sensory stimulation from the outside
world,” Lambie said by email.
“Any confinement needs to be for as limited a period of time as
possible, allowing the young person to reintegrate into their
surroundings,” Lambie added. “If possible, it is important that they
are let out for recreation, meals, etc.”
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry recommends
against solitary confinement for these reasons, and also notes that
suicide risk is much higher for young inmates who are kept in
isolation than for their peers who are in the general prison
population.
But the leading group for U.S. doctors treating children, the
American Academy of Pediatrics, has not issued recommendations on
solitary confinement.
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The AAP should call for a ban on the practice in the U.S. and
worldwide, the authors argue. In the absence of an outright ban,
correctional facilities should be required to report data on the use
of solitary confinement and any adverse health effects.
Even when it’s necessary to separate youth from adult prisoners to
keep kids safe, solitary confinement and isolation aren’t the right
way to accomplish this, said Dr. John Rozel, a researcher in
psychiatry and law at the University of Pittsburgh who wasn’t
involved in the article.
“The use of isolation and solitary confinement is often proffered as
a stop-gap intervention,” Rozel, who wasn’t involved in the study,
said by email. “But juvenile crime is neither new nor rare.”
With advance planning, the practice shouldn’t be necessary, said Dr.
David Fassler, a psychiatry researcher at the University of Vermont
College of Medicine in Burlington who wasn’t involved in the
article.
“The use of solitary confinement can and should be eliminated
through adequate staffing, appropriate training and access to
comprehensive assessment and treatment services for mental health
and substance use disorders,” Fassler said by email.
“President Obama’s decision to end the use of solitary confinement
for juveniles in the federal system sends a timely and important
message,” Fassler added. “Hopefully, it will encourage state
legislators and correctional administrators to institute similar
reforms.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1UTJSib Pediatrics, online April 5, 2016.
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