Just Incarceration: A Moral Evaluation of Solitary Confinement

Abstract

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]