It was a soapbox for policy debates — about prison privatization, solitary confinement, mental illness — but it was allergic to pedantry.
This evening-long piece, inspired by the memoirs of escape artists and prisoners, burrows into the nature of mental and physical confinement.
For those with existing mental health issues, confinement can literally be deadly.
The mental pain of solitary confinement is crippling: Brain studies reveal durable impairments and abnormalities in individuals denied social interaction.
The New York Legislature should move to prohibit the placement of people with serious mental illness in isolated confinement, as has been proposed, and Gov. George Pataki should sign the bill.
Transgender detainees are sometimes inappropriately placed in solitary confinement or mental health facilities in misguided efforts to protect their safety, experts said.
It was among the first steps in an aggressive public pushback against the film, which makes the case, sometimes with disturbing film, that orca whales in captivity suffer physical and mental distress because of confinement.
"The irony should not be lost on us that solitary confinement creates mental illness itself," she said, referring to what she said were the devastating psychological effects of being kept in extreme isolation.
