23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement

Pelican Bay State Prison is an exceptional space and a paradigmatic example of the logic of punishment in the United States today. Situated in a clear-cut in the redwood forests of northern California, the prison contains over one thousand windowless cells for the isolation of prisoners labeled “the worst of the worst.” Until recently, many of these prisoners were isolated indefinitely as a result of a Kafka-esque policy that marked people as gang members or associates on the basis of scant evidence, leaving them no way out of solitary but to “parole, snitch, or die” (p. 145). As a result of this policy, some California prisoners have spent years—even decades—confined for twenty-three hours per day in an eight-by-ten-foot Security Housing Unit (SHU), with one hour per day for exercise in an eight-by-twenty-foot “dog run.” After hunger strikes by prisoners at Pelican Bay in 2011 and 2013, as well as hearings by state lawmakers and the settlement of a major class-action lawsuit, the policy and practice of solitary confinement in California is changing. But “an archipelago of concrete boxes” still remains, and Keramet Reiter's new book helps us understand why (p. 58).