Supermax

Controlling Risk Through Solitary Confinement

Sharon Shalev

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134026746
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the rise and proliferation of 'Supermaxes', large prisons dedicated to holding prisoners in prolonged and strict solitary confinement, in the United States since the late 1980s.

Drawing on unique access to two Supermax prisons and on in-depth interviews with prison officials, prison architects, current and former prisoners, mental health professionals, penal, legal, and human rights experts, it provides a holistic view of the theory, practice and consequences of these prisons. Given the historic uses of solitary confinement, the book also traces continuities and discontinuities in its use on both sides of the Atlantic over the last two centuries.

It argues that rather than being an entirely 'new' form of imprisonment, Supermax prisons draw on principles of architecture, surveillance and control which were set out in the early 19th century but which are now enhanced by the most advanced technologies available to current day prison planners and administrators. It asks why a form of confinement which had been discredited in the past is now proposed as the best solution for dealing with 'difficult', 'dangerous' or 'disruptive' prisoners, and assesses the true costs of Supermax confinement.

Chapter 1

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Introduction: the supermax
phenomenon

I solemnly declare, that with no rewards nor honours could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day, or lie me down upon my bed at night, with the consciousness that one human creature, for any length of time, no matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the cause, or I consenting to it in the least degree. (Dickens 1842: 147)

This book concerns itself with the direct descendants of the ‘silent cells’ referred to by Charles Dickens in his excoriating essay on what was then regarded as the model prison, Philadelphia's much praised Eastern State Penitentiary. It examines the deep and far end of the American criminal justice system as it operated at the turn of the twenty-first century, and the resurrection of solitary confinement, one of the oldest forms of incarceration, in its newest incarnation in the prison setting - supermax prisons. It asks why, almost two centuries after Dickens’ unequivocal condemnation of the practice of isolation, tens of thousands of prisoners across the USA are yet again subjected to the immense suffering caused by prolonged solitary confinement, and questions its use as a legitimate prison practice.

Solitary confinement

In contemporary Western penal systems, most prisoners will spend their sentence in ‘congregated’ or ‘general population’ prisons. That is, they will share a cell with one or two (and sometimes more) other prisoners, be allowed to associate with others in designated areas and at designated times, and be offered some limited form of vocational, educational and therapeutic programmes. A certain percentage of prisoners, however, will be held alone in single cells where they eat, sleep, and spend most of their days. Standard typologies distinguish between three main forms of segregation: punitive, protective, and administrative. Punitive segregation is used as a type of punishment for prisoners’ misconduct while in custody, and is typically imposed for a set, limited period of time following some form of a disciplinary hearing. Protective segregation is used for holding vulnerable prisoners separately from the general prison population for their own protection. These may include, for example, sex offenders, police informants, former police or prison officers, and prisoners who might harm themselves or be harmed by others. Administrative segregation is used to segregate prisoners belonging to certain groups or categories such as ‘escape risks’, ‘gang members’, ‘predators’, ‘high risk’ and, more recently, ‘terrorists’, as an internal prison management tool. Administrative segregation is imposed on prisoners by prison personnel through administrative procedures and for managerial reasons, and is typically imposed for prolonged periods of time.

Throughout the 1990s, the overall use of segregation, in all its forms (i.e. punitive, protective and administrative), increased dramatically across the USA, at a rate which far exceeded the overall increase in prison populations: between 1995 and 2000 alone, the numbers of prisoners isolated across the USA rose by 40 per cent.¹

Whether punitive, protective or administrative, the conditions of confinement are essentially the same, namely, prisoners are confined alone in their cells for most or all of the day. Furthermore, apart from rare cases of high-profile prisoners sentenced to solitary confinement by the court, the decision to place a prisoner in solitary confinement is always made by prison administrators. The similarities in the practice make a typology dependent on the grounds or reasons for segregating a prisoner somewhat misleading. This book nonetheless follows it in focusing on administrative segregation, which in a sense is the most extreme form of solitary confinement: it is imposed on prisoners for prolonged periods of time, for reasons that often involve risk prediction and prison management rather than actual misconduct, and through administrative procedures often lacking in due process. Furthermore, in a trend that has been labelled ‘Marionization’,² in the late 1980s the extensive use of administrative segregation started gaining popularity in the USA, where many states constructed large new prisons or units within existing prisons, designed to accommodate a regime of strict and prolonged solitary confinement, enhanced by high-tech control measures. These new isolation prisons, generically known as ‘supermaxes’, are the main focus of this book.

Supermax prisons in the USA

There is no one definition of these prisons. Their name, too, varies from one jurisdiction in the USA to another³: ‘special control unit’, ‘intensive management unit’, ‘special management unit’ and ‘security housing unit’ are some of the names used by different states to describe very similar prisons. The generic name most commonly used is ‘supermax’, short for super-maximum security. Acknowledging the lack of a common name for supermax prisons, a study commissioned by the US Department of Justice's National Institute of Corrections (NIC) defined supermax as:

A highly restrictive, high-custody housing unit within a secure facility or an entire secure facility, that isolates inmates from the general prison population and from each other due to grievous crimes, repetitive assaultive or violent institutional behaviour, the threat of escape or actual escape from high-custody facility(s) or inciting or threatening to incite disturbances in a correctional institution. (Riveland 1999: 6)

A survey carried out in 2004 found that more than 95 per cent of US prison wardens surveyed agreed with this definition (Mears 2005).

Supermax prisons vary from each other, but in most one would find the following⁴:

• Cells measure 70 to 80 sq. feet.
• Prisoners are kept alone in their cells for 22½-24 hours a day.
• Prisoners exercise alone in a cage or concrete exercise yard with no recreational equipment for one hour a day.
• No congregating areas, and no group activities.
• No work opportunities and few, if any, in-cell educational programmes.
• Family visits are limited, and held through a thick glass barrier; no physical contact is allowed with visitors at any time.
• High-tech measures of control, surveillance and inspection.

In addition to their particular design features, which allow strict separation between the prisoner and others at all times, supermax prisons can be distinguished from standard punitive segregation units in two very important aspects: their overall size, and the duration of confinement in them. In terms of size, most supermax prisons are designed to hold several hundred prisoners (anywhere between 200 and 1,100) in the conditions listed above, compared to a few dozen in other segregation units. In terms of duration, prisoners can be held in supermax prisons for decades, compared to weeks or a few months in other segregation units.

At a time when prison systems across the USA are severely overcrowded and financially strained, supermax prisons with their single cells and high technology seem extravagant. Although expensive to construct and run, most states in the USA now operate at least one supermax prison. A US nationwide survey in 1997 revealed that the federal government and 34 states operate some form of a super-maximum-security prison or control units within prisons.⁵ By 2004, the number had risen to 44 states (Mears 2005). These prisons are built as an addition to, not replacement of, existing segregation units in general population prisons, thus dramatically increasing the number of isolation cells throughout the USA.⁶

Supermax prisons are officially targeted at those who are deemed to be chronic troublemakers, dangerous or disruptive prisoners who cannot be controlled in general population settings, the ‘worst of the worst’ in the prison system. They are an extreme form of exclusion: exclusion from the prison society of those excluded from wider society. The promise of austere conditions and tight measures of control over allegedly dangerous prisoners is politically contagious, and politicians and prison administrators across the USA and elsewhere are competing to build the most secure, high-tech, fortified isolation prison. Economically depressed communities eager to get a share of the business generated by prisons place bids to have supermax prisons built in their region. As an incentive, some counties even donate the land for the prison site to the relevant department of corrections. Private companies, too, stand to profit through constructing, equipping and maintaining these prisons. Supermax prisons seem to have been the flavour of the last decade of the twentieth century, and there are few signs to indicate a reversal of this enthusiasm in the twenty-first century.

Not only are there few signs that supermax prisons are losing their attractiveness to prison administrators, politicians, rural communities, private companies or the public, but also their design and operation have been exported to other countries (including Australia, Brazil, Peru and South Africa), and to other contexts, particularly in relation to the ‘war on terror’. Indeed, the design and regime in two of the permanent structures (Camp 5 and Camp 6) at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where, since early 2002, the US government has been holding ‘enemy combatants’ captured by its armed forces, are directly modelled on maximum security prisons in the USA.

For the most part supermax prisons remain, unlike Guantánamo Bay, in the shadows. More light needs to be the shed on the phenomenon of supermaxes and their consequences for those held inside them and the wider society. I hope that this book contributes to that task.

Explaining the supermax phenomenon

Prisoners, journalists, and other observers have described supermax prisons as ‘factories of exclusion’ (Bauman 2000), ‘steel embodiments of the dynamics of power’ (Berkman 1995), ‘stark and grim modern dungeons’ (Burton-Rose et al. 1998: 187), ‘a form of psychological warfare’ (Bustamente 1995), ‘expensive and soul-destroying’ (Commission on Safety and Abuse 2006: 59), ‘a proto-techno-fascist's architectural wet dream’ (Levasseur 1995), ‘like being entombed in steel and concrete’ (Lutalo 1995), ‘temples of sadomasochism’ (Miller 2000), ‘quiet tombs of the human spirit’ (Neumann 1998), ‘high tech hell’ (Parenti 1999a: 209) and ‘custodial overkill’ (Toch 2001). Supporters of solitary confinement, past and present, on the other hand, dismiss its critics as sentimental, bleeding-heart liberals who make exaggerated and unsubstantiated allegations.⁷ Substantiating or rejecting any claims regarding supermax confinement, however, is no easy task, as few ‘outsiders’ have access to them. Indeed, if prisons are generally hidden from view, supermax prisons are hardly ever seen from the inside by any outsiders, including prisoners’ family members, the media, academics, attorneys, prison reform groups, and so on. Any contact that these outsiders have with supermax prisons is limited to short visits or interviews with prisoners conducted in specially designed areas and through a glass partition.

In 2001, Kurki and Morris (2001: 386) commented, ‘It is surprising and disturbing how little reliable information about supermax prisons is available, considering their proliferation and the moral and policy issues they raise.’ Although the supermax phenomenon has been receiving growing attention in recent years, there are still few comprehensive studies of these prisons.⁸ Commentators seeking to explain the rise of supermax prisons tend to focus on one aspect of the phenomenon. Some view current practices as a reflection of the very nature of late modernity: exclusionary, segregative and demobilising. Bauman (2000), for example, asserts that contemporary penal policies tend to maintain order by ‘resorting to a paradigm of exclusion’. In his view, supermax prisons such as the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) in California (discussed in detail this book), operate as a

factory of exclusion for people habituated to their status as ‘the excluded’. It is a technique of immobilisation, one of several measures of ‘space-confinement’ that have arisen in response to the post-modern social field, and the wasteful, rejecting logic of globalisation. (Bauman 2000: 205)

The concept of ‘waste management’ and immobilisation techniques is also prominent in Feeley and Simon's (1992) ‘new penology’ thesis. Other commentators focus on changing social sensibilities, ‘moral panics, cyclical patterns of moral intolerance and anxieties associated with fundamental social changes [that] increase inclinations for adoption of harsh, inhuman and ill-considered crime policies’ (Tonry 2001: 179; see also Austin and Irwin 2000). Garland (2001) views supermax prisons as one of the new strategies of ‘punitive segregation’ which emerged as a response to the growing insecurities which characterise modern society. For Rutherford (1996: 10–12), supermax prisons are a ‘contemporary embodiment of the eliminative ideal … [that] sits all too comfortably with … pressures for social exclusion, with notions of a culture of contentment and of a functional underclass’.

Yet others focus on wider shifts in the US criminal justice system since the early 1980s, particularly the massive growth in prison populations, the abandonment of rehabilitative efforts, and the adoption of increasingly punitive ideologies and strategies, or the ‘penal harm movement’.⁹ Together, these factors resulted in overcrowded prisons where prisoners had little access to programmes:

Supermax prisons emerged in this context – seized on as a technologically enhanced tightening screw on the pressure cooker-like atmosphere that had been created inside many prison systems in the United States. As the pressure from overcrowding and idleness increased, the screw was turned even tighter. (Haney 2003: 128)

Others focus on managerial strategies for maintaining internal order in prison systems and on the return to the managerial strategy of the concentration of troublemakers in single institutions rather than their dispersal in segregation units of v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables and figures
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: the supermax phenomenon
• 2 Solitary confinement as a penal strategy: a brief history
• 3 Factors and actors in the rise of supermax prisons
• 4 Ideologies of control: discourses on the goals and roles of supermax prisons
• 5 The bureaucratisation of control: prisoner classification and placement in supermax prisons
• 6 Technologies of control: the architectural design, physical fixtures and security arrangements in supermax prisons
• 7 Inside a supermax: daily routines and prisoner provisions
• 8 The dynamics of control: views from the control room, views from the cells
• 9 Evaluating supermax confinement
• Appendix: Responses to documentary film on supermaxes
• Bibliography
• Index