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\u201cIsolation is the key component of oppression.\u201d In February 1975, Michel Foucault\u2019s groundbreaking\u00a0Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison<\/em> was published. Fifty years later, we\u2019re still in the ongoing midst and mess of the birth of the birth of prison. Near the beginning of that treatise, Foucault explained<\/a>, \u201cA punishment like forced labour or even imprisonment \u2013 mere loss of liberty \u2013 has never functioned without a certain additional element of punishment that certainly concerns the body itself: rationing of food, sexual deprivation, corporal punishment, solitary confinement \u2026 There remains, therefore, a trace of \u2018torture\u2019 in the modern mechanisms of criminal justice \u2013 a trace that has not been entirely overcome, but which is enveloped, increasingly, by the non-corporal nature of the penal system\u201d. The \u201ctrace of torture\u201d that remains was documented this week in two studies that considered the conditions of immigration detention in the United Kingdom and the United States.<\/p>\n On Monday, Physician for Human Rights released \u201cEndless Nightmare\u201d: Torture and Inhuman Treatment in Solitary Confinement in U.S. Immigration Detention<\/a><\/em>. The authors found, \u201cICE oversaw more than 14,000 placements in solitary confinement between 2018\u00a0and 2023. Many people who are detained in solitary confinement have preexisting mental health conditions and other vulnerabilities. The average duration of solitary confinement is approximately one month, and some immigrants spend over two years in solitary confinement.\u201d In terms of number of \u201cplacements in solitary confinement\u201d, people sent to solitary confinement, and hours and days (and years) spent in solitary confinement this number represents \u201ca marked increase\u201d during both the Trump and Biden administrations. The average stay in solitary is 27 days, \u201cwell exceeding the 15-day threshold that United Nations (UN) human rights experts have found constitutes torture.\u201d The report notes the lack of oversight and that that lack has been well documented often. While the authors suggest that greater oversight would help reduce the torture, it\u2019s not the case that \u201cthe system\u201d doesn\u2019t know it\u2019s torturing the most vulnerable. As one former detainee, a survivor of torture in Uganda, put it<\/a>, \u201cI would rather be tortured physically back home than go back through the psychological pain here. You wouldn\u2019t think that a first-world country that advocates for human rights would have such venom.\u201d The thing about venom is that it spreads.<\/p>\n
\nChristina Fialho<\/a><\/p>\n