Abstract

The Pelican Bay State Prison, California's first supermax facility, contains more than a thousand cells designed for solitary confinement. Until conditions eased slightly after hunger strikes in 2011 and 2013, Pelican Bay’s solitary confinement prisoners spent twenty-two-and-a-half hours per day in their eighty-square-foot cells. In 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement, the scholar and advocate Keramet Reiter sets out to explain why and how supermax prisons emerged in the United States around 1990. David Glenn reviews 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement by Keramet Reiter.

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