Slavery Summary: Sam Mandez And Solitary Confinement

In 1996, Sam Mandez was imprisoned for a murder he allegedly committed at the age of 14. During his time in Colorado’s State Prison, he was put into solitary confinement for minor disciplinary issues. Issues such as having a three way call when he was not supposed to, or leaving a key in a bathroom lock after it had closed for the night. For his heinous actions, he was put under “administrative segregation” otherwise known as solitary confinement. He spent 22 to 24 in a cell for 16 years. During this time Sam said he would talk to himself and, eventually, he said voices began to talk back. Sam has been diagnosed with a chronic paranoid psychosis that includes thought disorders, delusions of grandeur, and auditory hallucinations. Before his
The trauma of severe sensory deprivation for over a decade and a half. Unfortunately, Sam Mandez’s story is not the only of his kind. According to journalistsresource.org there are currently over 12,000 inmate housed in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement differs across states, but generally it consisted of being locked in a small cell for 22 plus hours a day for months, or years, on end. Inmate’s days are regulated and controlled down to the hour, and are purposefully allowed as little contact with others as possible. Solitary Confinement is a dehumanizing experience that completely throws the idea of rehabilitation out the window. It makes criminals more likely to offend and incapable of adjusting to any social
Violent inmate and inmates who cannot be with the general population could suffer from a multitude of mental or behavioral disorders. The problem is, however, that solitary confinement does not fix behavior or mental issues. In fact, solitary makes them worse. PBS’s Frontline (2014) reported on a few studies of isolation and hopelessness monkeys. They reported “In one notorious study from the 1950s, University of Wisconsin psychologist Harry Harlow placed rhesus monkeys inside a custom-designed solitary chamber nicknamed ‘the pit of despair.’…. Harlow also found that monkeys kept in isolation wound up ‘profoundly disturbed, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively, and mutilating themselves.’ Most readjusted eventually, but not those that had been caged the longest. ‘Twelve months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially,” If social isolation has this level effect on monkeys, why are we doing it to human beings? In a similar study, conducted by McGill University, researchers found similar affects occurred when human were isolate and deprived of their senses. They wrote, “McGill University paid a group of male graduate students to stay in small chambers equipped with only a bed for an experiment on sensory deprivation. They could leave to use the bathroom, but that’s all. They wore goggles and earphones to limit their sense of sight