Talking Solitary

Hot off the presses, “23/7” is an important new book from Yale University Press describing the history and realities of solitary confinement at Pelican Bay prison in California.  Author Keramet Reiter, who spent 15 years researching for the book, spoke about her project with the Berkeley Human Rights Center, here.  According to the publisher’s blurb:

“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.”

Reiter will deliver a keynote address on her work at a Symposium at Boalt Hall School of Law on November 4, from 12 to 4 p.m.   More information is available here.