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Prison

         Networks represent the interactions between multitudes of people with different personalities and backgrounds. Regardless of details such as residency, age, nationality, gender, etc. many people are connected to one another through the idea of “Six Degrees of Separation” which states that on average the length of the path, from you to almost anyone else in the world, is 6. However, this is through the networks that your connections have. Therefore, if we talk about a network of the interactions you have had with people on a daily basis, it is not possible to be linked to everybody especially if you’ve lost the ability to interact socially.

          One of the most extreme examples of a network is the prison system. A prison is comprised of many different groups of people who are connected to each other through their daily interactions. People split up into different groups, in order to survive, based on ethnicity or common beliefs and goals. In some way, most of the prisoners are connected to everyone else through some form of interaction because of the way the prison system has been constructed.

          In the Pelican State Bay Prison, there are many different gangs. Each gang has links between each other and the guards which may be weak or strong. However, some gang members do not have links with anyone else. This is because, at times, the gang members can be sentenced to multiple years of isolation. According to the New York Times article, as many as 3000 inmates were in solitary confinement, stuck in small rooms with no windows, and in the past many stayed in these rooms for decades. For prolonged periods of time, these people were cut off from the world. Assumed to be alive by the outside world, in reality the isolated prisoners were experiencing “social death” meaning that all ties and social interactions ceased and they were basically presumed to be dead by society. If allowed to return to the world, the prisoners had a tough time integrating because of their limited network and social skills. An example of this is Kalief Browder, who was incarcerated at the age of 16 and held in solitary confinement for 2 years. At the time of his release, he was unable to interact with others at all, including his parents. He would stay in his room all day and the crushing feeling of loneliness resulted in him taking his own life.

         The prison system is an extensive network which operates with the outside world however, it also harms many of the links prisoners have with society. On a graph, the prisoners can be represented as nodes clustered together and with many nodes surrounding the cluster and in the cluster without ties to anyone outside the system. As a result, the Pelican State Bay Prison has reformed many of its original conditions in order to lessen the impact prisons and solitary confinement has on prisoners.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/us/solitary-confinement-california-prisons.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=2

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/07/us/kalief-browder-dead/

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