Just Incarceration: A Moral Evaluation of Solitary Confinement

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Author
Essak, Balen Victor
Subject
Washington and Lee University, Shepherd Poverty Program
Solitary confinement
Imprisonment
Criminal justice, Administration of
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Capstone; [FULL-TEXT FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE] Balen Essak is a member of the Class of 2020 of Washington and Lee University. I will start by building an ethical framework for what constitutes just incarceration. Next, I will perform an in-depth analysis of the effects of the conditions of supermax prisons. For this analysis, I will synthesize existing literature about the psychological and psycho-somatic effects of solitary confinement from experimental data, meta-analyses, and anecdotal data from both research papers and an HBO documentary entitled, Solitary: Inside Life at Red Onion. I will then discuss whether the practices and effects of solitary confinement make it morally justifiable, given the just incarceration framework I built. [From Introduction] Essak