Reaction Paper

Reaction Paper

Introduction

The following video is all about the Solitary Confinement in the United States especially in the states of Arizona and California. The video started by the investigative agent named Bill Kurtis, who is considered to be the specialist in formulating the reports on the criminals. Therefore, in this paper, the main purpose is to figure out the life and the conditions of the prisoners while they were in the solitary confinement. Generally, a solitary confinement is a special form of a prison in the imprisonment where the prisoner is isolated from the rest of the inmates and there is no contact between them. The prisoner pushed into a concrete box where there is no human contact. Sometimes, the punishment is beyond incarceration for the prisoner and it is considered to be an extra punishment because of the aggressive and non-tolerable attitude and behavior of the prisoner.

The video by the title of Solitary Confinement is a marvelous piece of work because the video developer formulated the video in a very efficient and effective manner so that the viewers could easily come to know about the conditions of the prisoners while there duration at the solitary confinement. The video developer highlighted the two most bigly and advanced prison cells of the United States, i.e., the Arizona and California state prison cells. The purpose of developing of the video is to educating the citizens that the life in prison is not much easy and the society must understand the importance of the freedom and try to live the life of a responsible citizen.

Discussion

Solitary Confinement Programs

Solitary Confinement became immensely popular since the airing of the Solitary Confinement documentary. The drive to replicate these programs was based initially on the level of success cited in the film. The documentary claimed that 80-90 percent of the participants remained law abiding for a period of three months after the program was completed. Beyond these early claims of success, proponents of Solitary Confinement often point to two basic reasons why this type of programming is advantageous. First, a large portion of the appeal of a Solitary Confinement program is based on its simplicity. The program itself does not take long; a typical Solitary Confinement program may last two to three hours. Second, this type of programming is also inexpensive. Overhead costs are minimal, as the key actors in the program, the inmates, receive nominal compensation (or nothing at all) for their participation.

Beyond this, Bill Kurtis and colleagues have found that Solitary Confinement programs can show promise when using less confrontational methods. Take, for example, Project Aware, a non-confrontational prisoner awareness program in California. Project Aware involved civil discussions between prisoners and participants, devoid of the vulgarities, insults, and hostilities that characterized the Prisoners Awareness Project (The Week, 2013). The evaluation of this program, David Cook and Charles Spirrison found that Project Aware was effective in reducing the dropout rate and increasing school attendance for those who participated in the ...