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7. Supermax Confinement and the Exhaustion of Space
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161 7 SUPERMAX CONFINEMENT AND THE EXHAUSTION OF SPACE The world is not what I think, but what I live through. I am open to the world, I have no doubt that I am in communication with it, but I do not possess it; it is inexhaustible. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception I usedta live in the world / now i live in harlem & my universe is six blocks. —Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf The third wave of solitary confinement in the United States is the era of the control prison. Its implicit, and often explicit, aim is to control, contain, and incapacitate prisoners. Gone is the rhetoric of rehabilitation or spiritual redemption. It has been replaced by a neoliberal rhetoric of risk management, security, efficiency, accountability, and public–private partnerships. Even the official names of supermaxlevel prison cells reflect the aim of control, along with a desire to represent this aim as a legally acceptable administrative tool rather than as an instrument of outright punishment. Among the most common names on this seemingly interminable list are Special Housing Unit or Security Housing Unit (SHU), Control Unit (CU), Special Control Unit (SCU), Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU or AdSeg ), Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX or Ad-Max), Intensive Management Unit (IMU), and even Communication Management Unit (CMU). A 2005 Bureau of Justice report found that 81,622 prisoners reside in some form of restricted housing (Solitary Watch 2012b). 162 supermax confinement If anything, these numbers have increased as isolation units continue to be built in prisons, jails, and juvenile detention centers across the country, although the recent financial crisis has led some policy makers to propose cheaper alternatives. Critics compare supermax prisons to warehouses (Irwin 2005) or to “cold storage” for people (Human Rights Watch 1997).1 And indeed, most of the prisons I have visited are located in light industrial areas. One drives—perforce, because there is hardly ever public transit to these places—past distribution centers, mini storage depots, trucking company headquarters, low-rent offices . . . and prisons. The visual distinction between these different sites is often negligible. The only thing that makes Charles Bass Correctional Complex in Nashville, Tennessee, stand out from the other businesses on Cockrill Bend Boulevard are the extra layers of razor wire beyond and between the standard chain link fences. A casual observer could mistake the grounds around Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, down the street from Charles Bass, for a suburban golf course. Wild turkeys and deer graze on the green hills by the river, red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures soar overhead, and fireflies light up along the stream in the evening. But the prisoners see almost nothing of this. If they are lucky, they will have permission to walk along neatly plotted sidewalks from one unit to the other, where they will be able to see the open sky above them. Most of the prisoners I work with in Unit 2 at Riverbend have not touched the grass or seen the stars in over twenty years. They are allowed an hour of recreation time a day in a cage they call the dog pen. Some choose to remain in their cells during rec time. “I feel safer there,” said one prisoner.2 Advocates of supermax prisons portray inmates as “the worst of the worst”: serial killers, rapists, and terrorists who pose an incontrovertible threat to society at large, and even to other inmates. But in practice , many inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes end up in Control Units because they have broken prison rules against fighting (which is sometimes unavoidable), refusing to work (for pennies an hour, or in some states for no wages at all), possession of contraband (which can include anything from weapons to spicy tortilla chips), or even selfmutilation or attempted suicide (Shalev 2009, 72).3 Some inmates are placed directly into the SHU without having done anything to break the rules because they are presumed to be gang members or gang associates , or because they are vulnerable to attacks from other inmates.4 [18.209.209.246] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:52 GMT) supermax confinement 163 As a result, there is a disproportionate number of black, Latino, queer, and trans inmates held at the supermax level.5 Control Units are also notorious as destinations for politically active prisoners or perceived “leaders” within the general prison population.6 Once an inmate has landed in a supermax...