Word: padilla
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...December, officials in Texas and California conceded that the suicide rates in their prisons are on the rise, with the majority occurring among inmates in solitary. This prompted an outcry against both systems. Lawyers for accused terrorist facilitator Jose Padilla challenged his fitness last month to stand trial, arguing that his 3½ years in solitary lockdown at a South Carolina military brig have rendered him unable to assist in his own defense. Around the same time, convicted bomber Eric Rudolph began corresponding with a reporter for a Colorado newspaper, describing his days...
...Modern science has confirmed this, with electroencephalograms showing that after a few days in solitary, prisoners' brain waves shift toward a pattern characteristic of stupor and delirium. When sensory deprivation is added--as when Padilla was seen being led from his cell wearing a blindfold and sound-deadening earphones--the breakdown is even worse. As long ago as 1952, studies at Montreal's McGill University showed that when researchers eliminate sight, sound and, with the use of padded gloves, tactile stimulation, subjects can descend into a hallucinatory state in as little as 48 hours...
...eventual ruling on Padilla's fitness could liberalize things further, and similar suits are sure to follow. Even so, no one thinks the supermax system is going away soon. For all the debate the prisons generate, it may not take much to make them more palatable to civil libertarians. TVs or radios, reading material and clocks, as well as a bit of natural lighting--which provides critical time-of-day orientation--would help stabilize inmates. So would human contact with guards or other prisoners...
What's more, inmates aren't the only ones hurt by extreme incarceration. People like Padilla or the Guantánamo Bay detainees are, in theory, resources for information about the extremist groups with which they are putatively associated. "To an overwhelming degree, such people are not threats behind bars. They're opportunities," says Grassian. "We hurt ourselves by destroying their sanity." Closer to home, prisoners serving sentences for more mundane crimes do sometimes get released. Demolish their psyches while they're in prison, and nobody's safer when they...
...Terrorism. Co-creator Joel Surnow is a rare Hollywood Republican, and John McCain has done a cameo. Dick Cheney is a big fan too, and you can understand the Administration's wanting to associate itself with Bauer's badass competence. (He nabs nuclear masterminds; we get Jose Padilla.) Most damningly to critics on the left, Bauer's means of gathering intel (grab terrorist's finger, snap, repeat) make 24 a weekly rationalization of the "ticking time bomb" defense of torture...