Terry A. Kupers

Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with prisoners, correctional officers, and civilian staff conducted in solitary confinement units, Way Down in the Hole explores the myriad ways in which daily, intimate interactions between those locked up twenty-four hours a day and the correctional officers charged with their care, custody, and control produce and reproduce hegemonic racial ideologies. Smith and Hattery explore the outcome of building prisons in rural, economically depressed communities, staffing them with white people who live in and around these communities, filling them with Black and brown bodies from urban areas and then designing the structure of solitary confinement units such that the most private, intimate daily bodily functions take place in very public ways. Under these conditions, it shouldn’t be surprising, but is rarely considered, that such daily interactions produce and reproduce white racial resentment among many correctional officers and fuel the racialized tensions that prisoners often describe as the worst forms of dehumanization. Way Down in the Hole concludes with recommendations for reducing the use of solitary confinement, reforming its use in a limited context, and most importantly, creating an environment in which prisoners and staff co-exist in ways that recognize their individual humanity and reduce rather than reproduce racial antagonisms and racial resentment. Way Down the Hole Video 1 (https://youtu.be/UuAB63fhge0)Way Down the Hole Video 2 (https://youtu.be/TwEuw1cTrcQ)Way Down the Hole Video 3 (https://youtu.be/bOcBv_UnHIs?)Way Down the Hole Video 4 (https://youtu.be/cx_l1S8D77c)

Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with prisoners, correctional officers, and civilian staff conducted in solitary confinement units, Way Down in the Hole explores the myriad ways in which daily, intimate interactions between those locked up twenty-four hours a day and the correctional officers charged with their care, custody, and control produce and reproduce hegemonic racial ideologies. Smith and Hattery explore the outcome of building prisons in rural, economically depressed communities, staffing them with white people who live in and around these communities, filling them with Black and brown bodies from urban areas and then designing the structure of solitary confinement units such that the most private, intimate daily bodily functions take place in very public ways. Under these conditions, it shouldn’t be surprising, but is rarely considered, that such daily interactions produce and reproduce white racial resentment among many correctional officers and fuel the racialized tensions that prisoners often describe as the worst forms of dehumanization. Way Down in the Hole concludes with recommendations for reducing the use of solitary confinement, reforming its use in a limited context, and most importantly, creating an environment in which prisoners and staff co-exist in ways that recognize their individual humanity and reduce rather than reproduce racial antagonisms and racial resentment. Way Down the Hole Video 1 (https://youtu.be/UuAB63fhge0)Way Down the Hole Video 2 (https://youtu.be/TwEuw1cTrcQ)Way Down the Hole Video 3 (https://youtu.be/bOcBv_UnHIs?)Way Down the Hole Video 4 (https://youtu.be/cx_l1S8D77c)

"When I testify in court, I am often asked: 'What is the damage of long term solitary confinement?' ... Many prisoners with serious mental illness emerge from prison after years in solitary with much worse disability, and even stable individuals emerge with very serious psychiatric symptoms. The damage from isolation is dreadfully real." In the U. S., there are approximately 100,000 inmates held in supermax prisons and isolation units in other prisons and jails, confined to 8' x 10' windowless holes for 23-24 hours a day, sometimes for decades. Terry A. Kupers, one of the world's leading experts on the effects of solitary confinement, takes us inside the cells and minds of some of the thousand inmates he's interviewed while investigating prison conditions over the last 40 years. From prisoners ignored by staff for urgent medical and psychiatric needs to "cell extractions" where officers in riot gear spray a prisoner with immobilizing gas to subdue him, Kupers has seen the gamut of violence that inmates encounter daily. With an empathetic yet realistic voice, Kupers sheds light on the social purposes for disappearing disadvantaged people while providing constructive rehabilitative alternatives to solitary confinement.