Rapper Meek Mill’s legal team is working overtime to get the rapper sprung from a 2-4 year sentence that many believe was done unfairly by a star-struck Philadelphia judge and now they have filed an additional motion to have the rapper moved to general population. Meek believes the longer he is being held in solitary confinement (23 hours a day) it will mess with his psyche and impede his ability to create music. Experts have shown that keeping a prisoner in solitary confinement over a long period of time can be detrimental to their mental health.
In an effort to better understand the issue, Maureen O’Keefe, a researcher with the Colorado Department of Corrections, and Kelli Klebe, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Colorado, recently conducted a longitudinal study of the psychological effects of administrative segregation in a Colorado prison, with funding from the Department of Justice. The researchers studied 65 male inmates and 24 controls who were being evaluated at institutional hearings to decide whether they would be placed in solitary confinement or the general prison population.
Klebe and colleagues hypothesized that segregated inmates would show worsening psychological health measures over time, and that negative effects would be even more pronounced among inmates who had previously been diagnosed with a mental illness. To her surprise, neither hypothesis was supported by the data.
The researchers found that the segregated prisoners did show elevated rates of various psychological disorders, says Klebe, but she cautions that those symptoms are often present even before inmates enter administrative segregation. It’s possible that inmates who are referred for a segregation hearing have a lot of psychological problems to begin with, she suggests, “and that’s what’s earning them the way into a lockdown situation.”
Hopefully, this whole issue will be resolved relatively soon with the Philly rapper because a 2-4 year sentence appears to be excessive in light of the fact that both the state’s District attorney and Meek Mill’s probation officer recommended that the rapper shouldn’t be imprisoned.
Story is developing.
