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Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement
Keramet Reiter
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Format: PaperPrice: $22.00
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How America’s prisons turned a “brutal and inhumane” practice into standard procedure
Originally meant to be brief and exceptional, solitary confinement in U.S. prisons has become long-term and common. Prisoners spend twenty-three hours a day in featureless cells, with no visitors or human contact for years on end, and they are held entirely at administrators’ discretion. Keramet Reiter tells the history of one “supermax,” California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, whose extreme conditions recently sparked a statewide hunger strike by 30,000 prisoners. This book describes how Pelican Bay was created without legislative oversight, in fearful response to 1970s radicals; how easily prisoners slip into solitary; and the mental havoc and social costs of years and decades in isolation. The product of fifteen years of research in and about prisons, this book provides essential background to a subject now drawing national attention.
Originally meant to be brief and exceptional, solitary confinement in U.S. prisons has become long-term and common. Prisoners spend twenty-three hours a day in featureless cells, with no visitors or human contact for years on end, and they are held entirely at administrators’ discretion. Keramet Reiter tells the history of one “supermax,” California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, whose extreme conditions recently sparked a statewide hunger strike by 30,000 prisoners. This book describes how Pelican Bay was created without legislative oversight, in fearful response to 1970s radicals; how easily prisoners slip into solitary; and the mental havoc and social costs of years and decades in isolation. The product of fifteen years of research in and about prisons, this book provides essential background to a subject now drawing national attention.
Keramet Reiter is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and at the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine. In 2017, she received the American Society of Criminology’s Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award for outstanding scholarly contributions to the discipline.
ISBN: 9780300240191
Publication Date: October 9, 2018
Publication Date: October 9, 2018
312 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
11 b/w illus.
11 b/w illus.
