Reason Magazine: Nick Gillespie- James Ridgeway: 'Is Solitary Confinement a Form of Torture?'

Source:Reason Magazine- with a piece about solitary confinement in America.

"Obama says we don't torture, but a lot of this is straight-up torture," says journalism legend James Ridgeway. "We call Guantanamo and Afghanistan torture and we never look at our own stuff."

Ridgeway is talking about the growing use - and abuse - of solitary confinement in American prisons. He estimates there are 80,000 prisoners currently in solitary, many whom are mentally ill and suicidal. One prisoner Ridgeway is following has been in solitary for 40 years and he notes that some lawmakers are proposing life sentences in solitary as a "humane" alternative to the death penalty. Ridgeway and associates report their findings at SolitaryWatch.com.

Ridgeway is currently a Washington, D.C. correspondent for Mother Jones. He was a longtime correspondent for the Village Voice, and he's best known for uncovering that General Motors hired private detectives to try and defame consumer advocate Ralph Nader back in 1966.

ReasonTV's Nick Gillespie sat down with Ridgeway to talk about the growing use of solitary and what we can do about it." 

From Reason Magazine

If you are interested in crime and punishment and even reality TV (not celebrity contests, which is essentially what reality TV has become) about what goes on in life and how people live their lives, then I suggest you checkout MSNCB Lockup, which airs on weekends. They goes inside of some of America's toughest prisons. I wish they would get into private prisons but perhaps in the future, as well as Federal prisons. 

MSNCB Lockup, as well as the Criminal Investigation Network, American Justice on BIO, Lockdown on Nat Geo, Discovery ID has a show as well, they go into these prisons and show people who aren't in prison, what life is like behind bars, for thousands of our prison inmates. And they pay special attention to life in solitary confinement, where we house our most challenging prison inmates. 

These documentary shows on cable covers a  lot cases of prison inmates with mental problems. Who perhaps should be in mental institutions instead and people who haven't given up their criminal careers, just because they are in prison and don't feel they should have to obey rules. Inside or outside of prison and end up getting into fights, attacking other inmates, running criminal enterprises while in prison etc.

When it comes to my writing, especially my blogging where I manage my own site, if I'm anything it's a realist as a writer. I'm not some lefty-hippie who thinks it's never OK for government to be tough on hardcore criminals who intentionally hurt innocent people. And I''m not some so-called Libertarian, whose really just some right-wing Anarchist who thinks locking people away in prisons is some type of legalize kidnapping. Of course we have to have prisons in a free society like America where it's fairly easy to break the rules of society, but a helluva lot harder to get away with breaking the rules of society.

We need prisons, we tough prisons, we need maximin security prisons for our hardcore career criminals who are always willing to use violence to accomplish their objectives. We even need solitary confinement for some our violent offenders who've continued their criminal careers while in prison. But even solitary has to be a tool for rehabilitation and an opportunity for inmates to improve themselves and at least help them become productive, responsible, inmates. Even if they never actually get out of prison, they should at least have the opportunity to return to the general population in prison.