Kupers, Dr. Terry: Solitary Confinement and How to End It

What this episode covers

Click here to begin listening (http://www.radio4all.net/files/[email protected]/1197-1-KUPERS_INTERVIEW2_2-14-18_JG2_2-19-18_PUBLISHED.mp3) In this edition we again visit with Dr. Terry Allen Kupers, a forensic psychiatrist and the author of “Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It." In our first visit, available on line at radiocurious.org, Dr. Kupers describes the abysmal conditions in which an estimated 100,000 incarcerated people, both men and women are held in solitary confinement in the United States. Kept in dark, cold, and often wet cells, more or less eight feet by ten feet in size, they have little or no human contact, sometimes for years on end. Many suffer from mental illness, prior to or as a result of living solitary confinement. This results in significant long term damage to these people as individuals and to our society as a whole. In this second of our two part series, Dr. Kupers shares stories of prisoners held in solitary confinement and what he believes is necessary to achieve meaningful rehabilitation for people who have committed crimes and sentenced to prison. When Dr. Terry Kupers and I visit by phone from his home in Oakland, California, on February 14, 2018, we began this second visit when I asked him to describe what he calls a rehabilitative attitude. The book Dr. Kupers recommends is: Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement,” edited by Jean Casella, James Ridgeway and Sarah Shourd This program was recorded on February 14, 2018.

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