Prisoners in Virginia are hunger striking, demanding an end to solitary confinement. Click here to urge the Governor and prison officials to listen to them.

Want some basic facts on solitary confinement?

According to PBS:

". . . Studies on human subjects are rare — in part because most modern universities would never consent to them — but in 1951 researchers at McGill University paid a group of male graduate students to stay in small chambers equipped with only a bed for an experiment on sensory deprivation. They could leave to use the bathroom, but that’s all.  They wore goggles and earphones to limit their sense of sight and hearing, and gloves to limit their sense of touch. The plan was to observe students for six weeks, but not one lasted more than seven days. Nearly every student lost the ability 'to think clearly about anything for any length of time,' while several others began to suffer hallucinations. 'One man could see nothing but dogs,' wrote one of the study’s collaborators, 'another nothing but eyeglasses of various types, and so on.'

"What are the effects on prisoners? In short, not much better. Stuart Grassian, a board-certified psychiatrist and a former faculty member at Harvard Medical School, has interviewed hundreds of prisoners in solitary confinement. In one study, he found that roughly a third of solitary inmates were 'actively psychotic and/or acutely suicidal.' Grassian has since concluded that solitary can cause a specific psychiatric syndrome, characterized by hallucinations; panic attacks; overt paranoia; diminished impulse control; hypersensitivity to external stimuli; and difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory. Some inmates lose the ability to maintain a state of alertness, while others develop crippling obsessions."

Is this what you want your government using your money to do to people? If not, please click here and share this email.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights:

"Researchers have proven that prolonged solitary confinement causes a persistent and heightened state of anxiety and nervousness, headaches, insomnia, lethargy or chronic tiredness, nightmares, heart palpitations, fear of impending nervous breakdowns and higher rates of hypertension and early morbidity. Other effects include obsessive ruminations, confused thought processes, an oversensitivity to stimuli, irrational anger, social withdrawal, hallucinations, violent fantasies, emotional flatness, mood swings, chronic depression, feelings of overall deterioration, and suicidal ideation. Exposure to such life-shattering conditions clearly constitutes cruel and unusual punishment – in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and international laws."

Have Virginia prison officials read the Eighth Amendment? It's only one sentence. Perhaps we should ask them to.

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-- The RootsAction.org team

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