OurTupelo

Ashley Rubin, University of Hawaii

Jails and prisons around the United States are considering freeing some of their inmates for fear that correctional facilities will become epicenters in the coronavirus pandemic.

COVID-19 has infected hundreds of prisoners and staff in city jails, state prisons and federal prisons.

New York, California and Ohio were among the first to release incarcerated people. Other states have followed, saying it is the only way to protect prisoners, correctional workers, their families and the broader community.

Jails and prisons often lack basic hygiene products, have minimal health care services and are overcrowded. Social distancing is nearly impossible except in solitary confinement, but that poses its own dangers to mental and physical health.

As a prison scholar, I recognize a sad irony in this public health problem: The United States’ very first prisons were actually designed to avoid the spread of infectious disease.

Early American jails

The first U.S. prisons emerged in reaction to the overcrowded, violent, disease-infested jails of the colonial era.

Prisons as we understand them today – places of long-term confinement as a punishment for crime – are relatively new developments. In the U.S. they came about in the 1780s and 1790s, after the American Revolution.

Previously, American colonies under British control relied on execution and corporal punishments.

Jails in America and England during that period were not themselves places of punishment. They were just holding tanks. Debtors were jailed until they paid their debts. Vagrants were jailed until they found work. Accused criminals were jailed while awaiting trial, and convicted criminals were jailed while awaiting punishment or until they paid their court fines.

Consequently, early American jails were not designed for long detentions, even if people sometimes stayed for months or longer.

The physical structure of these unregulated local facilities – often run by sheriffs or private citizens who charged room and board fees – varied. Jail could be a spare room in a roadside inn, a stone building with barred windows or a subterranean dungeon.

Fear of disease

Disease, violence and exploitation were rampant in these squalid American colonial and British jails.

John Howard, a British aristocrat whose ideas influenced American penal reformers, became concerned about living conditions in these “abode[s] of wickedness, disease, and misery” when he became a sheriff. In a 1777 book, Howard recounts smelling vinegar, a common disinfectant of the era, to protect against the revolting smell of the jails he visited.

Howard warned readers that jails spread disease not only among inmates but also beyond, into society. He recalled the so-called Black Assize of 1577, in which prisoners awaiting trial were brought from jail to an Oxford courthouse and “within forty hours” more than 300 people who had been at court were dead from “gaol fever” – what we now call typhus.

He also wrote of infected prisoners who, once released, brought diseases from jail into their communities, killing scores.

Disease also shaped Howard’s understanding of how criminality spread.

He described how young “innocents” – the children of people jailed for debt or those awaiting trial for a petty offense – were seduced by dashing bandits’ stories of crime and adventure. Thus “infected,” they went on to become criminals themselves.

America’s first prisons

Howard’s ideas, particularly the realization that jails posed a threat to the public, were brought to the U.S. by Philadelphia reformers like Benjamin Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Following the recommendations in Howard’s book, American penal reformers pushed for new jails designed to ward off disease, crime and immorality of all kinds.

Howard envisioned new facilities that would be well ventilated and cleaned daily. Clothing and bedding should be changed weekly. There would even be an infirmary staffed by “an experienced surgeon” who would update authorities on the state of prisoner health.

American reformers followed Howard’s advice that “women-felons” should be kept “quite separate from the men: and young criminals from old and hardened offenders.” Debtors, too, should be kept “totally separate” from the “felons.”

Prisoners should be separated from one another, ideally in cells. Crowding should be avoided. All this would prevent the spread of disease and enable the prisoners’ repentance – and thus their rehabilitation.

Using Howard’s book as their guide, Rush and his colleagues transformed Philadelphia’s aging and overcrowded Walnut Street Jail into one of the country’s first state prisons by 1794. The Walnut Street Prison model was soon adopted nationwide.

Health care in prisons today

The U.S. long ago departed from the idea that prisons should protect both prisoners and society.

The biggest shift in prison health care occurred between the 1970s and today – the era of mass incarceration. The U.S. incarceration rate doubled between 1974 to 1985 and then doubled again by 1995. The number of people in American prisons peaked in 2010, at 1.5 million. It has declined slightly since, but the U.S. still has the world’s largest incarcerated population.

Prison building, although unprecedented in scale, has not kept pace. Many corrections facilities in the U.S. are dangerously overcrowded.

In 1993, 40 states were under court orders to reduce overcrowding or otherwise resolve unconstitutional prison conditions. Many more lawsuits followed. Still, the prison population grew.

One consequence of overcrowding is that prison officials have a difficult time providing adequate health care.

In 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that overcrowding undermined health care in California’s prisons, causing avoidable deaths. The justices upheld a lower court’s finding that this caused an “unconscionable degree of suffering” in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Amid a worldwide pandemic, such conditions are treacherous. Some of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in U.S. prisons and jails are in places – like Louisiana and Chicago – whose prison health systems have been ruled unconstitutionally inadequate.

Criminologists and advocates say many more people should be released from jails and prison, even some convicted of violent crimes if they have underlying health conditions.

Opponents of coronavirus-related releases, including state officials in Louisiana, contend that the move poses a high risk to public safety. And victims of violent crimes complain that they have not been notified when their victimizers are set to be released.

The decision to release prisoners cannot be made lightly. But arguments against it discount a reality recognized over two centuries ago: The health of prisoners and communities are inextricably linked.

Coronavirus confirms that prison walls do not, in fact, separate the welfare of those on the inside from those on the outside.

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Ashley Rubin, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Hawaii

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Erin C. Westgate, University of Florida

More and more of us are staying home in an attempt to slow down the spreading coronavirus. But being stuck at home can lead to boredom.

Boredom is a signal that we’re not meaningfully engaged with the world. It tells us to stop what we’re doing, and do it better – or to do something else.

But, as a social psychologist who studies boredom, I know that people don’t always make the best choices when bored. So if you’re stuck at home, dutifully practicing your social distancing, how do you keep boredom away?

About boredom

We can feel bored even with jobs and activities that appear to be meaningful. For example, researchers have found anesthesiologists and air traffic controllers find themselves bored on the job.

What this research reveals is that just because something is objectively meaningful doesn’t mean it feels that way to us all the time. And even meaningful work can be boring if the person performing it finds it too hard or too easy. Once that happens, individuals might struggle to stay focused.

Reducing boredom requires that individuals solve the problems that produced it – not having sufficient activities that are both meaningful and optimally challenging.

However, sometimes people turn to activities that make them feel better in the moment, but that don’t provide long-term meaning or challenge. For instance, studies have shown that people are willing to self-administer electric shocks when bored.

Other behaviors linked to greater susceptibility to boredom include increased alcohol intake and marijuana use. Boredom is also tied to unhealthy snacking and online pornography.

While these may feel good in the moment, they provide only temporary relief from boredom. To prevent boredom and keep it away, we need to find solutions at home that provide lasting meaning and challenge.

1. Remind yourself why you’re doing this

People generally prefer doing something to doing nothing. As staying home is the most effective way to prevent the further transmission of the coronavirus, it is meaningful to socially isolate. However, it may not always feel that way.

Like all emotions, boredom is about whatever you’re thinking at the moment. That means staying at home will only feel meaningful when we’re actively thinking about the greater good it does. For instance, in studies, when students were prompted to reflect on why their schoolwork mattered to them personally, researchers found that their interest in learning increased.

In other words, reframing our activity changes how we feel about it.

Creating simple reminders, such as a note on the fridge, or a morning meditation, can help us keep the big picture in view: Staying home is a sacrifice we’re actively making for the good of others.

2. Find a rhythm

Routines structure our days, and provide a sense of coherence that bolsters our meaning in life. People’s lives feel more meaningful in moments when they’re engaged in daily routines.

We lose those routines when we give up going to the office, or when we are laid off. Even retirees or stay-at-home parents are disrupted by closures to cities, restaurants and schools. This loss of routine can foster feelings of boredom.

By creating new routines, people can restore a sense of meaning that buffers them from boredom.

3. Go with the flow

Figuring out what to do when faced by long days unstructured by work or school can be hard. A recent study of people in quarantine in Italy found that boredom was the second most common issue, after loss of freedom.

One thing that makes such situations hard is that it can be tricky to find activities that are just challenging enough to keep one occupied, without being too demanding. This situation can leave people bored and frustrated.

It helps to keep in mind that what counts as too challenging, or not challenging enough, will shift throughout the day. Don’t force yourself to keep at it if you need a break.

4. Try something new

Boredom urges many of us towards the novel. Embrace that urge, judiciously. If you have the energy, try a new recipe, experiment with home repairs, learn a new dance on TikTok.

Doing new things not only relieves boredom, it helps acquire new skills and knowledge that may relieve boredom in the long run. For instance, we feel a surge of interest when we read an interesting novel or go through complex experiences, but only if we have the capacity to understand them.

Evidence shows that embracing new experiences, can help us lead not only a happy or meaningful life, but a psychologically richer one.

5. Make room for guilty pleasures

It’s okay to binge on television, if that’s all you can handle at the moment.

We sometimes paint ourselves into a box where our most meaningful hobbies are also mentally taxing or effortful. For instance, digging into a classic Russian novel may be meaningful, but it doesn’t necessarily come easily.

Similarly, well-intentioned suggestions for how to cope at home, such as hosting a virtual wine-and-design night, may be simply too exhausting to be pleasurable at a time when many of us are already struggling.

Give yourself permission to enjoy your guilty pleasures. If need be, reframe those moments as much-needed mental refreshment, nourishing and recharging you for a later date.

6. Connect with others

Finding easy meaningful alternatives – bite-sized options that don’t take much effort, but that we find deeply rewarding – can be a challenge.

Luckily one good option is open to us all: connecting with others, whether virtually or for those lucky enough not to be quarantined alone – in-person.

Looking at old photos, or reminiscing with a friend, are simple meaningful actions most of us can take even when we’re not feeling our best. One does not need a reason to call up a friend – our best socializing is the kind that happens casually, in the unstructured time between scheduled activities.

Create room for that virtually as well: Next time you’re pouring a glass of wine or watering the plants, call up a friend while you do it. Make dinner together. We don’t have to be bored, when we’re all in this together.

Boredom itself is neither bad nor good, only our choices about how to counter it make it so.

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Erin C. Westgate, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Florida

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.