During the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic the term "solitary
confinement" was often tossed around as a way to complain about the
mandatory periods of isolation in our homes.
Among those cringing after the term was used this way were University of Delaware Professors Angela Hattery and Earl Smith.
Real solitary confinement is in small cells, rarely larger than 6
feet by 8 feet, with little or no natural light. In the cells are
nothing but one’s thoughts, a toilet, a bed and a single book – usually a
Bible. The prisoners are locked in for 23 hours a day with the
possibility of 1-hour out of cell for recreation, depending on staffing
situations, noted Smith.
Smith and Hattery are professors in the Department of Women and
Gender Studies, located in the College of Arts and Sciences. Their
research is focused on systemic racism and gender-based violence.
Hattery is also co-director of the Center for the Study and Prevention
of Gender-Based Violence.
The pair recently published a book, Way Down in the Hole: Race, Intimacy, and the Reproduction of Racial Ideologies in Solitary Confinement,
which is based on hundreds of hours of observation in solitary
confinement situations and interviews with nearly 100 people who are
incarcerated or work there. Their research documents the torture of
solitary confinement and uncovers the role it plays in perpetuating
systems of racism and white supremacy across America.
“Most Americans believe that the torture that takes place in solitary
confinement is in Russia, is in North Korea, is in China,” Hattery
said. “It never occurs to them that somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000
people in the United States are locked in solitary confinement every
single day. We are torturing that many people every single day in
solitary confinement.”
Over the course of three summers (2017-2019) Smith and Hattery
conducted research inside solitary confinement units in a mid Atlantic
state. In exchange for unprecedented access to the solitary confinement
units, the pair agreed to not release the exact location of the prison
they visited.
“Solitary confinement is a place where our racial history is on full
display,” Hattery and Smith wrote. “Not only are the majority of the
staff white and the majority of the prisoners Black and brown, but the
very premise of solitary confinement relies on the foundation of white
supremacy on which this country was built.”
The book illuminates the issue of white racial resentment and how it
can form and grow within solitary confinement. Prisons with solitary
confinement units are often located in rural communities that are
economically disadvantaged and predominately white. Most interactions
these white guards have with Black people are in cells.
“As a result, the stereotypes they have of Black people, as violent,
angry, drug-using criminals is reinforced,” wrote the two sociologists.
“In solitary confinement, where the correctional officers are required
to hand deliver all of the necessities of daily life, including food,
medicine, and even toilet paper, they come to resent the ‘benefits’ that
they perceive the prisoners are receiving, including access to medical
and mental health care that they have trouble getting for themselves and
their families.”
