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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.



About the Author

Keramet Reiter

Keramet Reiter is the author of 23/7, the first comprehensive history of the origins of the modern supermax, or supermaximum security prison, and the co-editor of the Extreme Punishment anthology. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and at the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine. She has taught in prison education programs, worked at Human Rights Watch, and testified about the impacts of solitary confinement before state and federal legislators. She lives in Los Angeles, CA.



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