Outline for speech on the effects of Solitary Confinement.

Essay by GuardianLynxCollege, Undergraduate April 2012

download word file, 5 pages 0.0

Title: Effects of Solitary Confinement

Specific Purpose: My audience will understand more about how loneliness and isolation affect people, especially those people in solitary confinement.

Thesis Statement: Being in Solitary confinement has a major mental, emotional, and social impact on people.

Introduction:

Gaining and maintaining favorable attention: Alone. In a cell. For days. Or decades. Today more then 80,000 Americans are in solitary confinement (National Geographic). Cut off from human contact. Subject to what might be the most extreme prison environment ever designed. Some say it's the only way to handle the worst prisoners. Other's say it amounts to psychological torture worse then any physical abuse.

Relating the topic to the audience: Ever been completely alone? Not even strangers around. These people are Absolutely Alone. Often for years at a time. Imagine going 2..5.. maybe 13 years without being outside.. Seeing any sunlight. Feeling the wind. Or seeing the sky.

"Man wasn't made for this. We're physical creatures" . "It's like you're stranded like in cast-away. You start talking to a volleyball. That's like how you start to feel if you're in there too long."

Relating the topic to the presenter: I have studied psychology and loneliness, researched solitary confinement. I have worked with inmates before, and also have many friends in the criminal justice program I have talked to.

Previewing the message: Being in solitary confinement can have devastated effects on people. Today I will talk about some of those effects and examine how solitary confinement works and how well it actually accomplishes what it is designed to do.

-Transition- Let's start by examining what exactly the condition are like in Solitary confinement.

Body:

I. First main point: To understand how it might be traumatizing, we have to understand the environment they are trapped in.A. With only 15-minute...