I've spent 3-6 months in places where I didn't see another person, but I always had the option of leaving, and I had the Internet, which makes it entirely different from prison. I've done 2-3 weeks with no Internet and no other people who spoke English (and who I didn't really interact with beyond them bringing me food/water), and it wasn't too bad -- I read books and
I'm confident I could do a month alone in a reasonable room with just books and paper and enjoy it (the only cost being the forgone opportunity to do other stuff, but it would be overall enjoyable) -- catching up on a lot of fiction, history/biography, and tech reading. 6-12 months with a computer, preloaded with development tools and books, but no live Internet access, would be fine too. I really don't understand the people who think a 3-5 year mars mission with only a few other people would be that psychologically difficult.
But prison wardens don't let inmates read whatever they want. Do you think you could survive reading only what the warden would let you read (and doing only what they permit you to)?
I don't know about you but I think I'd struggle to survive more than a day or two.
Baseline of being in prison at all would be pretty bad. Even if I just had Left Behind books, that might be preferable to being in the general population.
(I'm 99.9% certain you could get a bible, if nothing else -- while I'm an atheist, it would be interesting reading, if only to understand cultural references, and is quite long. Law books would be great, and there are legal arguments ensuring access to those, too.)
Some reading materials should obviously be censored (e.g. information about lock picking, practical drug recipes and violent pornography).
But not even the US prison system should want to limit prisoner's intellectual development! To help prisoners grow will make a subset of them productive members of society instead of parasites. Win-win.
Edit: I'm a European, but not dogmatic. My native Sweden should imho use harsher sentencing in some areas. But this was just ridiculously contra productive.
I'm confident I could do a month alone in a reasonable room with just books and paper and enjoy it (the only cost being the forgone opportunity to do other stuff, but it would be overall enjoyable) -- catching up on a lot of fiction, history/biography, and tech reading. 6-12 months with a computer, preloaded with development tools and books, but no live Internet access, would be fine too. I really don't understand the people who think a 3-5 year mars mission with only a few other people would be that psychologically difficult.