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n making the case against solitary confinement, David Brooks cites research done by Matthew Lieberman of UCLA showing that the brain processes physical pain and social pain in much the same way
---in fact, social pain may be more damaging to human beings than physical pain. Brooks concludes, “Before long, one suspects, extreme isolation will be considered morally unacceptable.” Brain imagining makes it hard not to “see” what we do to our fellow human beings.
His final statement about what humans need for health has universal application: “When you put people in prison, you are imposing pain on them. But that doesn’t mean you have to gouge out the nourishment that humans need for health, which is social, emotional and relational.”
We don’t flog people in our prison system, or put them in thumbscrews or stretch them on the rack. We do, however, lock prisoners away in social isolation for 23 hours a day, often for months, years or decades at a time.
We prohibit the former and permit the latter because we make a distinction between physical and social pain. But, at the level of the brain where pain really resides, this is a distinction without a difference. Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles, compared the brain activities of people suffering physical pain with people suffering from social pain. As he writes in his book, “Social,” “Looking at the screens side by side ... you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.”
David Brooks also mentions the op-ed by Rick Raemisch, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, as one of several positive signs that attitudes and policies toward solitary confinement are changing:
http://acesconnection.com/profiles/blogs/my-night-in-solitary
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