Bradley Manning Isn't Living On An Estate In England

Protests mount over treatment of alleged WikiLeaks soldier

In the latest public pronouncements calling attention to Manning's plight, the Psychologists for Social Responsibility this week sent an open letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying it is "deeply concerned" about Manning's confinement conditions at a military prison at Quantico, Va.
"As an organization of psychologists and other mental health professionals, PsySR is aware that solitary confinement can have severely deleterious effects on the psychological well-being of those subjected to it," the group said. "We therefore call for a revision in the conditions of PFC Manning’s incarceration while he awaits trial, based on the exhaustive documentation and research that have determined that solitary confinement is, at the very least, a form of cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment in violation of U.S. law."
"Coercive conditions of detention also increase the likelihood of the prisoner 'cooperating' in order to improve those circumstances, even to the extent of giving false testimony," the letter said. "Thus, such harsh conditions are counter to the interests of justice."

Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness in U.S. Prisons: A Challengefor Medical Ethics

Jeffrey L. Metzner, MD and Jamie Fellner, Esq.

Physicians who work in U.S. prison facilities face ethically difficult challenges arising from substandard working conditions, dual loyalties to patients and employers, and the tension between reasonable medical practices and the prison rules and culture. In recent years, physicians have increasingly confronted a new challenge: the prolonged solitary confinement of prisoners with serious mental illness, a corrections practice that has become prevalent despite the psychological harm it can cause. There has been scant professional or academic attention to the unique ethics-related quandary of physicians and other healthcare professionals when prisons isolate inmates with mental illness. We hope to begin to fill this gap.
Solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture.1,2 Nevertheless, U.S. prison officials have increasingly embraced a variant of solitary confinement to punish and control difficult or dangerous prisoners. Whether in the so-called supermax prisons that have proliferated over the past two decades or in segregation (i.e., locked-down housing) units within regular prisons, tens of thousands of prisoners spend years locked up 23 to 24 hours a day in small cells that frequently have solid steel doors. They live with extensive surveillance and security controls, the absence of ordinary social interaction, abnormal environmental stimuli, often only three to five hours a week of recreation alone in caged enclosures, and little, if any, educational, vocational, or other purposeful activities (i.e., programs). They are handcuffed and frequently shackled every time they leave their cells.3–5 The terms segregation, solitary confinement, and isolation will be used interchangeably to describe these conditions of confinement.

So where are the celebrity advocates for Bradley Manning? Where are the protests? Or is he just some schmuck to you best forgotten.