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Apart From Political Prisoners, (and That Too Only In Countries With ...

Apart from political prisoners, (and that too only in countries with established democratic institutions), prisoners are regarded to be morally inferior, capable of anti social acts, and treated like pariahs who deserve to be punished. In communist Russia, political prisoners were thought to be mentally deranged and banished to Gulags in distant places.(Rhodes, 2004) Prison is meant to be a place of punishment and is associated with difficulty and hardship. Similar social emotions and attitudes have undoubtedly played a major role in the design and administration of prisons down the ages, and while social change and advances in humanitarian thinking have been instrumental in reducing barbarities like extreme torture, inhuman practices like 23 hour shutdowns, solitary confinement, and manacling of prisoners whenever they are out of their cells, continue to exist in western societies, especially for difficult prisoners in high security jails.
Some 600 inmates were protesting the conditions in which the state says it must hold its most difficult prisoners: locked up for 23 hours out of every 24 in a barren concrete cell measuring 7 1/2 by 11 feet. Near-total isolation is a typical condition. Some prisoners are kept in isolation even for the one hour per day that they are allowed out to exercise; all are shackled whenever they are taken out of their cells. Many are forced to live this way for years on end. Such extreme deprivation literally drives people crazy. Many experts agree. (Abramsky, 2002)
This appalling situation does not refer to prison conditions in totalitarian or fundamental dictatorships in third world countries. It describes the state of affairs in a routine American high security prison in a caring democratic society. While the administrative and security needs of high security prisons may be more stringent, the precedence given to security and administrative needs and prison constraints, over prisoner welfare, has historically been and continues to be, a major issue in impeding the improvement of facilities for inmates with mental health problems.
While prison authorities are restricted in their options to improve prison conditions by financial, administrative and security constraints, social activists have, over the years played major roles in creating awareness about prison conditions, and in catalysing change initiatives. Study of the conditions of prisoners with mental health problems started in the UK, in the18th century, with the development of disciplines like psychology and psychiatry. John Howard, a social reformer who worked with prison inmates in the late 18th century, wrote about the significant numbers of mental health patients and the difficult conditions they had to face on an everyday basis.

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