The United Nation has 17 Sustainable Development Goals including (3) Good Health and Well-Being and (8) Decent Work and Economic Growth. The US prison system and its gross use of solitary confinement, directly impedes these goals for the prisoners within them.
(3) Good Health and Well-Being; decades of solitary confinement in no way promotes good health and the well-being of people within them. “Stuart Grassian, a board-certified psychiatrist and a former faculty member at Harvard Medical School, has interviewed hundreds of prisoners in solitary confinement. In one study, he found that roughly a third of solitary inmates were “actively psychotic and/or acutely suicidal.” Grassian has since concluded that solitary can cause a specific psychiatric syndrome, characterized by hallucinations; panic attacks; overt paranoia; diminished impulse control; hypersensitivity to external stimuli; and difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory. Some inmates lose the ability to maintain a state of alertness, while others develop crippling obsessions.” (10)
(8) Decent Work and Economic Growth; “The average of the minimum daily wages paid to incarcerated workers for non-industry prison jobs is now 86 cents, down from 93 cents reported in 2001. The average maximum daily wage for the same prison jobs has declined more significantly, from $4.73 in 2001 to $3.45 today.” (12) With the average pay incarcerated workers get being overwhelmingly low to begin with, how is one who is placed in solitary confinement for years to decades able to create any sort of economic growth or have any decent work?
All in all, the US has been extremely violating human rights under the veil of incarceration. We, as a people, need to massively critique our current penal institution and system.
Human Rights & Sustainable Development 