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They can't focus on tasks, sleep, and fear their anxiety will boil over into rage. Many isolated prisoners say they can't contain it and fear greater punishment will result.
"Eventually, and often rather quickly, a prisoner's psychiatric condition deteriorates (to) where he inexplicably refuses to return his food tray, cuts himself or pastes paper over the small window in his solid metal door, causing security staff to trigger an emergency 'take-down' or 'cell extraction.' "
At supermaximum security prisons, it happens as often as 10 times a week because total isolation breaks the human spirit and causes bizarre behavior. Madness is easy to create under these conditions:
-- overcrowd prisons and impose long sentences;
-- dismantle rehabilitation and education programs;
-- create forced idleness;
-- some prisoners already are mentally ill;
-- obstruct or restrict visitations and other human contact;
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