Abstract

There’s right and there’s wrong. Right is better. John McCain got it right when he said, ”It’s an awful thing solitary... It crushes your spirit and weakens your resiststance more effectively than any other form of mistreatments.” (Fetig 2011) To look at the widespread use of this practice, you would think there’s not much disagreement—and not much objectionable—to “absolute solitude,” as sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville called it in 1831. After touring a New York prison, he concluded solitary confinement had no reformative value (Marcus 2012). The reality is that solitary confinement is about the worst punishment imaginable.