Supermax: Controlling Risk Through Solitary Confinement

• NCJ Number: 230319
• Author(s): Sharon Shalev
• Date Published: 2009
• Length: 286 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Overview Text
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This book offers an historical perspective of solitary confinement and the emergence of supermax phenomenon in the United States, and provides a comprehensive review of the theory, practice, and consequences of these prisons.

Abstract

This book examines the deep and far end of the American criminal justice system as it operated at the turn of the 21st century, and the resurrection of solitary confinement, one of the oldest forms of incarceration, in its newest incarnation within the prison setting, supermax prisons. These new isolation prisons, generically known as 'supermaxes', are the main focus of this book. The book consists of eight chapters. It begins with a review of the history of the use of solitary confinement as a penal strategy since the early 19th century. It continues with a brief examination of some of the macro-level factors and actors which played a role in the creation of supermax prisons in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. It examines how supermax prisons are officially justified and what their goals are, and looks at claims regarding their alleged system-wide benefits. It also examines how official discourses and justifications are translated into administrative categories, how prisoners are selected for allocation to supermax prisons, and how and when they can leave them. The architectural design of a typical supermax unit is reviewed followed by a return to the tradition of prison sociologies with a deep examination of daily routines and interactions within a supermax, as well as the procedures and regulations governing their operation. The final two chapters examine how environmental and situational factors inherent in supermax prisons affect prison officers' perception of the prisoners under their supervision, and how prisoners experience, and are affected by their time in isolation (as well as after release), and evaluates the costs and benefits of supermax prisons with consideration of what the future may hold. Tables, figures, notes, bibliography, and index