Isolation exercise yard, Security Housing Unit, Pelican Bay, Crescent City, California, a supermax-type control, high security facility said to house California’s most dangerous prisoners. © Richard Ross
Solitary confinement is in the news … for lots of reasons – a lawsuit brought by prisoners against the Federal Bureau of Prisons; a lawsuit brought by 10 prisoners in solitary against the state of California; a June Senate hearing on the psychological and human rights implications of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons (which included the fabrication of a replica sized AdSeg cell in the courtroom); an ACLU report pegging solitary as human rights abuse; a NYCLU report showing arbitrary use of solitary, a NYT Op-Ed by Lisa Guenther; the rising use of solitary at immigration detention centres; and the United Nations’ announcement that solitary is torture.
Recently, journalists from across America have contacted me looking for photographs of solitary confinement to accompany their article. I could only think of three photographers – one of whom wishes to remain anonymous; another, Stefan Ruiz is not releasing his images yet; which leaves Richard Ross‘ work which is well known.
Stefan Ruiz’ photographs of Pelican Bay State Prison, CA made in 1995 for use as court evidence. (See full Prison Photography interview with Ruiz here.)
With a seeming paucity, I went in search of other images. I found an image of a “therapy session” by Lucy Nicholson from her Reuters photo essay Inside San Quentin. A scene that has been taken to task by psychologist and political image blogger Michael Shaw.
Shane Bauer took a camera inside Pelican Bay for his recent Mother Jones report on solitary confinement.
Rich Pedroncelli for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Pelican Bay has been hosting media tours and welcoming journalists in the past year – partly due to public pressure and partly through a strategic shift by the CDCR to appear to be responding to public outcry. Maybe the courts have had a say, too?
© Lucy Nicholson / Reuters. Prisoners of San Quentin’s AdSeg unit in group therapy. (Source)
© Shane Bauer. Pelican Bay SHU cell. (Source)
© Shane Bauer. CA CDCR employees show investigative journalist Shane Bauer the Pelcian Bay SHU “Dog run.” (Source)
Correctional Officer Lt. Christopher Acosta is seen in the exercise area in the Secure Housing Unit at the Pelican Bay State Prison near Crescent City, Calif., Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011. State prison officials allowed the media to tour Pelican’ Bay’s secure housing unit, known as the SHU, where inmates are isolated for 22 1/2 hours a day in windowless, soundproofed cells to counter allegations of mistreatment made during an inmate hunger strike last month. Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, AP/SF (Source)
The amount of visual evidence still seems limited. It’s not that reporting on solitary confinement is lax or missing. To the contrary, I’ve listed at the foot of this piece some excellent recent journalism on the issue form the past year. We lack images.
Look Inside A Supermax a piece done with text and not images is typical of the invisibility of these sites. National Geographic tried a couple of years to bring solitary confinement to a screen near you. ABC News journalist Dan Harris spent the “two worst days of his life” in solitary to report the issue.
Why do we need to see these super-locked facilities? Well, depending on your sources there are between 15,000 and 80,000 people held in isolation daily (definitions of isolation differ). My conservative estimate is that 20,000 men, women and children are held in single occupancy cells 23 hours a day.
Gabriel Reyes, prisoner at Pelican Bay SHU writes about his experience for the San Francisco Chronicle:
“For the past 16 years, I have spent at least 22 1/2 hours of every day completely isolated within a tiny, windowless cell. […] The circumstances of my case are not unique; in fact, about a third of Pelican Bay’s 3,400 prisoners are in solitary confinement; more than 500 have been there for 10 years, including 78 who have been here for more than 20 years.”
Solitary confinement is a “living death”; an isolating “gray box” and “life in a black hole.” Imagine locking yourself in a space the size of your bathroom for 23 hours a day. As James Ridgeway, currently the most prolific and reliable reporter on American solitary confinement, writes:
“A growing body of academic research suggests that solitary confinement can cause severe psychological damage, and may in fact increase both violent behavior and suicide rates among prisoners. In recent years, criminal justice reformers and human rights and civil liberties advocates have increasingly questioned the widespread and routine use of solitary confinement in America’s prisons and jails, and states from Maine to Mississippi have taken steps to reduce the number of inmates they hold in isolation.”
The over zealous and under regulated use of solitary confinement to control risk and populations within U.S. prisons is a cancer within already broken corrections systems. I’m posting a few more image that Google images afforded me – but I urge caution – these are just a glimpse and may not be indicative of solitary/SHU conditions. Windows are a rarity in solitary despite three images below showing them.
The main reason I’m posting here is to ask for your help in sourcing all the photography of U.S. solitary confinement we can. Please post links in the comments section and I’ll add them to the article as time goes on.
SELECT IMAGES
© Alice Lynd. Front view of cell D1-119. Todd Ashker has been in a Security Housing Unit (SHU) for more than 25 years, since August 1986, and in the Pelican Bay SHU nearly 22 years, since May 2, 1990. “The locked tray slot is where I get my food trays, mail.” (Source)
A typical special housing unit (SHU) cell for two prisoners, in use at Upstate Correctional Facility and SHU 20.0.s in New York. Photo: Unknown. (Source)
Bunk in Secure Housing Unit cell, Pelican Bay, California © Rina Palta/KALW. (Source)
Solitary Confinement at the Carter Youth Facility. Since the arrival of the girls’ program at Carter, the administration has created a new seclusion cell. This cell contains no pillow, sheet, pillow case or blanket. In fact, there is nothing in the cell other than a mattress, which was added after numerous requests from the monitor. Girls are routinely placed in this room for “time out.” Photo: Maryland Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit. (Source)
© Rina Palta, KALW. “More than 3,000 prisoners in California endure inhuman conditions in solitary confinement.” This photo, taken in August 2011 of a corridor inside the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison, illustrated Amnesty’s report. (Source)
© National Geographic. In Colorado State Penitentiary 756 inmates are held in “administrative segregation” alone in their cells for 23 hours a day. 5 times a week they are allowed into the rec room where they can exercise and breath fresh air through a grated window. (Source)
FURTHER READING
Eddie Griffin, prisoner in s Supermax prison in Marion, IL writes about “Breaking Men’s Minds” [PDF.]
Boxed In NYCLU campaign and report with resources and video against use of solitary confinement. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
The Gray Box, an investigative journalism series and film about solitary across the U.S., by Susan Greene. (Dart Society) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
ACLU – Stop Solitary Confinement – Resources – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
ACLU _ State specific reports on solitary confinement
Andrew Cohen’s three part series on “The American Gulag” (Atlantic)
Atul Gawande’s take on the psychological impacts of solitary confinement (New Yorker)
Sharon Shalev, author of Supermax: Controlling Risk Through Solitary Confinement, here writes about conditions. (New Humanist)
The shocking abuse of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons (Amnesty)
SOLITARY ELSEWHERE ON PRISON PHOTOGRAPHY
Interview with Isaac Ontiveros, Director of Communications with Critical Resistance, about Pelican Bay solitary and community activism.
The invention of solitary confinement.
RIGO 23, Michelle Vignes, the Black Panthers and Leonard Peltier
Chilean Miners, Russian Cosmonauts and 20,000 American Prisoners
Robert King, of the Angola 3, writes for the Guardian
31 comments
Comments feed for this article
November 12, 2012 at 7:33 pm
A mccol
They are there for a reason, to be blunt they are sh** sticks. All they have to do is follow the rules of the prison (court tested rules) and they can go to a lower custody. You know, like maybe not throwing human waste on the CO’s?
November 12, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Sista
Such an uninformed comment from A mccol. If your family member was in this situation, maybe you would not be so glib. This type of lock up is not only cruel but it is sick.
November 13, 2012 at 3:39 am
Elspeth Van Veeren
Pete. Is there a reason for omitting Guantanamo? In my understanding that, though militarised, there are so many overlaps in practice, design, and personnel, that it is a US ‘supermax’. Indeed, it is held up as an example of US supermax’s to those that visit and how ‘wonderful’ and ‘progressive’ these spaces are (regardless of what a little digging reveals). So, should photographs of Guantanamo not feature in your list/analysis and if not, why not? What does leaving it out do politically for those campaigning for rights for those in Guantanamo and in more conventionally understood US prisons?
For more details, see http://www.academia.edu/631423/Guantanamo_Does_Not_Exist_Simulation_and_the_Production_of_the_Real_Global_War_on_Terror
http://sussex.academia.edu/ElspethVanVeeren
November 13, 2012 at 8:10 am
Steve
Pete, while any of my images are of minors, a great deal of them were taken in solitary confinement, or “Intensive Management” as they liked to call it.
November 13, 2012 at 8:07 pm
prisonenquirer
Great post. I always appreciate the pictures that you post and publicize. So often with prison, a picture is truly worth a thousand words. I think these photos of solitary confinement say more about life lived locked down 23/1 than any narrative ever could.
November 13, 2012 at 8:35 pm
lockdownpublishing
Great article. It is awesome to watch the pendulum swinging into the SHU walls of solitary confinement from every angle. For those who don’t understand, the path into solitary confinement is wide and the path out is narrow. I spent 10 years in prison with 3 SHU terms for just surviving. I struggled with poverty and a drug addiction as a runaway and turned it into prison sentences. Was I the worst of the worst? Not really. There isn’t one sex offender in the SHU.
November 13, 2012 at 10:06 pm
petebrook
Elspeth. Thanks for the thoughtful comment and questions. Firstly, I agree with you that the supermax (or hypermax) as I’ve seen it described in Guantanamo is of the same breed of fear and control as the US supermax. But, while the structures and the strategies of discipline are very similar, I contend that the political policies and resistance operate along different channels. Maybe I been duped. I like your framework of a “triple screen” to describe how Guantanamo has been perceived as safe, humane and legal. Guantanamo, as you have researched, is over mediated, whereas the US supermaxs are not photographed and rarely mediated (Pelican Bay in CA is the glaring exception.) Even a dozen visits to Guantanamo https://prisonphotography.org/2009/09/23/a-dozen-visits-to-guantanamo/ isn’t going to get at visual accuracy. Indeed, a photographer’s presence at Guantanamo is quite useless https://prisonphotography.org/2010/03/30/tim-dirven-nor-any-photographer-is-likely-to-tell-us-anything-new-about-guantanamo/ I collected many links about Guantanamo a few years back https://prisonphotography.org/2009/05/23/guantanamo-directory-of-photographic-and-visual-resources/ and I may confess that I overlooked Guantanamo because I’ve considered it over-photographed. But, you are right, in the search for accurate visuals – and associated testimony – it’d be wise to include Guantanamo in this same inquiry. ‘Where Are All The (Non-Mediated) Photographs Of Guantanamo’s Solitary Confinement?’ I also feel that internationally, other nation-states (especially those involved in GWOT) have some means to express positions on Guantanamo, whereas the solitary confinement in U.S. prisons is a homeland criminal justice debate. Paradoxically, spelling out the links between militarised and homeland prisons produces the strongest critique of either.
November 13, 2012 at 10:08 pm
petebrook
Thanks Steve. It’s true. You should be less modest and have included a link! I’ll do it for you: http://stevedavisphotography.com/ (Click ‘Captured Youth’ under the projects tab.)
November 13, 2012 at 10:39 pm
Sista
I have been in communication with over a thousand men at Pelican Bay since it opened in 89. I host a radio show that the men could hear. One thing about Pelican bay and solitary is that the men were not allowed colored pencils or crayons to do art. Only the filler from the inside of a pen was permitted. I have hundreds of pieces of art done this way.
I saw some time ago that inmates at Guantanamo made some amazing art in color. I saw it on some site on line. There is so much more to tell about what happens in Solitary at Pelican bay. It is sick, it really is. I hope we end this barbaric practice soon.
November 13, 2012 at 11:43 pm
Sista
I had to write again. Thank you Petebrook fo rSteves link. I had never heard of him before and took a look at Captured Youth display …It is quite amazing. I know those faces. I grew up with those faces….Steve, may I direct my listeners to your web page?
Thank you for your amazing work.
November 13, 2012 at 11:50 pm
petebrook
Sista. I’m sure Steve would be happy for you to direct folk to his webpage. Also, they may be interested in this two part interview Steve and I did a few years back: https://prisonphotography.org/2009/07/21/captured-youth-an-interview-with-steve-davis-part-one/
November 14, 2012 at 8:42 am
Steve Davis
Sista, certainly you’re welcome to mention my web page, and Pete’s interview with me is quite thorough. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. thanks
November 15, 2012 at 9:11 am
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November 19, 2012 at 1:15 am
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November 19, 2012 at 1:46 am
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November 20, 2012 at 11:27 am
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November 27, 2012 at 9:42 am
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March 13, 2014 at 10:03 am
Sharonannduffy@verizon.net
I’d like to know what I can do personally, to help prisoners in the State Of Florida..I would like to be an advocate, for the prisons & jails here…It has been a long time wish of mine, but I do not know where to begin…
March 20, 2014 at 6:23 pm
petebrook
Sharon. Find existing groups. Florida has many problems (including a comparatively bigger appetite for private prisons). There must be activists in the major cities focusing on putting pressure on politicians to make sensible decisions. More than anything the conversation needs ot be out there; speak with friends, family and strangers in a calm, informed manner. The facts of mass incarceration don’t lie and are convincing — it’s just that often we don’t get to hear them. Good luck!
March 20, 2014 at 6:28 pm
Sista Soul
Read Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow. Actually, read as many books on the topic of prisons and or solitary confinment as you are able. Read Mother Jones from a few months back whereShane Bauer wrote about visiting Pelican Bay State Prison in California. Shane was held in solitary in Iran and felt that solitary in America was even worse.
September 14, 2014 at 1:49 pm
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September 20, 2015 at 6:16 pm
fierceaboutserving
There are good and bad in every group, including jails and prisoners and guards and convicts alike!!
Good people make bad choices and or are lead to learn evil ways and behave based on their teaching, circumstances so I want to just add-
As a CHRISTIAN I believe no one deserves torment and evil (punishment yes)
but as a human I will tell you jails and prisons are absolute human warehouses of pain and misery and SOCIETY needs to CONSIDER this TRUTH;
You do not want the result of jail/prison life-meaning-
those who go away are faced with such a DESPERATION for survival that they become hate filled, violent and absolutely at times insane (simply in order to survive it is required to become violent and rage filled-
i know I was there!!
Anyone can say they would not become like that but you face rape, beatings, and other painful and degrading circumstances and the animal in You will come alive!!