The Scourge of Solitary Confinement

In the same decades that the prison population was multiplying exponentially, the proportion of prisoners suffering from serious mental illness was also expanding. There are now ten times as many prisoners with serious mental illness behind bars as there are in state and federal psychiatric hospitals. [...]relatively stable prisoners experienced serious emotional distress while prisoners with mental illness experienced severe exacerbation of their disorder and eventually, magnified psychiatric disability. [...]he was told by other kids that his options were, basically, "Fight or fuck!" A slightly older cellmate at the jail, who had already done some prison time, summed up for Ryan what young prisoners like him are forced to confront: "You can ask for protection, they call it 'lockin' up,' but if you do that you're branded a sissy from then on, and either someone will rape you in the protection unit or eventually you'll get out of protection and they'll attack you on the yard.