Solitary confinement is widely regarded as one of the cruelest things that human beings can do to another human being. What is the divine perspective on this form of treatment?

The whole purpose of solitary confinement and the reason it has been chosen as a time-honored punishment by prisons around the world is the recognition of the devastating effects it has because of the human makeup, that people need to have social interactions in order to thrive and even to function at a minimal level. People will be damaged from being kept in isolation. Many think it provides a safe haven with no stress other than having a lot of time on one’s hands and perhaps being bored. In actuality, this is highly stressful because when people are cut off from human interactions it is much like being lost in space, they become cut off from a sharing of information, energy, and the possibility of love feelings, for that is an aspect of every interchange of a positive sort. Even the act of sharing a cigarette on the part of a prisoner or a magazine from home can be an extraordinary blessing and delight for the incarcerated individuals. Solitary confinement is often a prelude to madness for many prisoners treated that way. That is because the level of stress that results weakens them and makes them more vulnerable to spirit possession that can wreak havoc in undermining their sanity. People need to belong to a circle of humans in order to feel safe, to feel they are a part of things, to have any semblance of a worthwhile life experience. When that is denied, it strips away the basic humanness that is your birthright and is indeed treating a person like an animal, to take away not only their liberty but their membership in the human community through having some contact on a regular basis. It is the height of cruelty to inflict this on anyone and is completely non-divine. It has been outlawed in most jurisdictions but often still practiced behind the scenes particularly for periods of punishment, but even today you can find amply illustrated in news accounts that political prisoners in the United States of America are held indefinitely in solitary confinement using a number of pretexts to justify it despite the nature of the alleged offenses being often of a technical and minor sort and far, far from the predations of a savage killer. There is something wrong with this picture. So you can use as a yardstick for measuring the divine alignment of a society by how it treats its prisoners and that will tell you a lot about your standing.