Relativity of Time: The Ethical Question of Time and Solitary Confinement

• In Event: Serving Hard Time: The Experience of Time in Timeless Places

Abstract

Correctional practitioners, policy makers and lawmakers assume time exists in a Newtonian sense, that time passes in a quantifiable and absolute way and that time persists regardless of the position and context of the observer. Those incarcerated in a solitary confinement setting experience the troubling implications of these assumptions. Taken up from a phenomenological frame, time proves non-Newtonian but relative. An important source of this relativity are their being-with others and alongside their physical world and the objects within. Their experience of incarceration removes others and narrows their world to an unchanging present, the bounds of their cell devoid of day-to-day change. This collapses time into an unchanging now, and devoid of relationships vital to human well-being, many of those incarcerated begin to psychologically decompensate. This presents a question regarding the ethics and constitutionality of this form of punishment, when taken up phenomenologically proves cruel and unusual.

Authors

• David Polizzi, Indiana State University

• Matthew Draper, Utah Valley University

• Keifer Weiland, Utah Valley University