Volume
73
Abstract
In the United States, experts estimate that nearly 100,000 incarcerated individuals are held in solitary confinement. While individuals can be held in solitary confinement for a variety of reasons, many are placed in lockdown because they have untreated mental illnesses, have committed some sort of minor disciplinary infraction, are need of protection, or for unpopular personal beliefs. In other words, solitary confinement is used as a broad catch-all to a wide range of low-level and nonviolent misbehaviors. This note argues that solitary confinement is an unjustifiable mode of punishment as analyzed under two commonly cited sociological theories of punishment: retributivism and reductivism. While these theories differ in their requirements and goals for punishment, they both presume that, at the minimum, some sort of sufficient justification is required for punishment. More specifically however, under the lens of retributivism, solitary confinement is an inappropriate form of punishment because it fails to punish individuals who are sufficiently blameworthy, and the method of punishment is disproportional to the harm committed. Under reductivism, solitary confinement is unjustifiable as a punishment because it does not deter incarcerated individuals from offending again in the future, nor does it incapacitate those same individuals from harming themselves or someone else after they are released. Ultimately, because solitary confinement is not a justifiable form of punishment under these two theories, it must be eliminated as such a tool in prisons.
Recommended Citation
Allison Lampert,
A Punishment that Harms Everyone and Benefits No One: An Analysis of the Use of Solitary Confinement Under Common Sociological Theories of Punishment,
73 Clev. St. L. Rev. Et Cetera
118
(2025)
available at https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/etcetera/vol73/iss1/5