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University of California Press

Solitary

The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It
by Terry Allen Kupers (Author)
Hardcover eBook
Price: $29.95 / £25.00
Publication Date: Sep 2017
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780520292239
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 8 halftones
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About the Book

“When I testify in court, I am often asked: ‘What is the damage of long-term solitary confinement?’ . . . Many prisoners emerge from prison after years in solitary with very serious psychiatric symptoms even though outwardly they may appear emotionally stable. The damage from isolation is dreadfully real.”
—Terry Allen Kupers
 
Imagine spending nearly twenty-four hours a day alone, confined to an eight-by-ten-foot windowless cell. This is the reality of approximately one hundred thousand inmates in solitary confinement in the United States today. Terry Allen Kupers, one of the nation’s foremost experts on the mental health effects of solitary confinement, tells the powerful stories of the inmates he has interviewed while investigating prison conditions during the past forty years. Touring supermax security prisons as a forensic psychiatrist, Kupers has met prisoners who have been viciously beaten or raped, subdued with immobilizing gas, or ignored in the face of urgent medical and psychiatric needs. Kupers criticizes the physical and psychological abuse of prisoners and then offers rehabilitative alternatives to supermax isolation. Solitary is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the true damage that solitary confinement inflicts on individuals living in isolation as well as on our society as a whole.

About the Author

Terry Allen Kupers is an award-winning psychiatrist and Professor Emeritus at The Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology.  As one of the nation’s foremost experts on the mental health effects of solitary confinement, he has testified in over two dozen class action lawsuits about jail and prison conditions, the quality of mental health care “inside” and the effects of sexual abuse behind bars.  He is a frequent consultant to the ACLU’s National Prison Project and Human Rights Watch and the author of Prison Madness. 
 

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Confinement’s Dimensionality

With one-third of the global population now under some form of lockdown or quarantine due to the spread of COVID-19, an unprecedented number of people are experiencing varying levels of isolation daily.We are all now familiar with the practice of "social distancing," in which individuals must st
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART ONE
HARSH PRISON CONDITIONS

1 • Supermax Isolation
2 • A Culture of Punishment
3 • Race Matters a Lot

PART TWO
THE HUMAN DAMAGE

4 • The Decimation of Life Skills
5 • Adding Madness to the Mix
6 • Women Do Not Do Well in Solitary
7 • Youth in Isolation
8 • The SHU Postrelease Syndrome

PART THREE
THE ALTERNATIVE SOLITARY

9 • A Rehabilitative Attitude
10 • Mental Health Care in Corrections
11 • The Disruptive Prisoner
12 • Beyond Supermax Isolation

Notes
References
Index

Reviews

“A must-read for those running our prisons and for policymakers in a position to reform them.”
— Kirkus Reviews
"Terry Kupers’ Solitary represents both a robust intellectual contribution to analyses of modern solitary confinement use and a powerful piece of advocacy advocating for abolition of the practice – a rare feat in an academic work."
— Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books
"Kupers, a forensic psychologist, is one of the nation's foremost experts on solitary confinement. His book is a timely and important contribution to the field. Kupers has toured dozens of  'supermax' prisons and given expert testimony in over 40 cases on conditions of confinement and its effects on mental health. His experiences observing prisons and interviewing prisoners subjected to solitary confinement have given rise to this book, an effort to expose the many serious problems associated with solitary confinement, and to abolish it."
 

— Choice
"With this conclusion, Kupers leaves readers with tools not only to argue against the ineffective supermax prison, but also to continue dismantling the prison industrial complex."
— Prison Focus
"Solitary probably won’t be read by many prisoners. It could enlighten 'correctional officers,' to use another euphemism, and it ought to be read by students and teachers in college departments that are supposed to teach 'Criminal Justice.' In its way, Solitary is as powerful, as important and as compelling a book as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which shows how the 'criminal injustice system' discriminates against African Americans, violates their basic human rights and treats them as twentieth-century slaves. Terry Allen Kupers affirms his own humanity and the humanity of the millions of Americans locked up in prisons from California to New York and Florida to the State of Washington. We may not be inside, but the shadow of the prison falls on every one of us, no matter where we live and work.'"
 

— HuffPost
"A highly readable account of the history of isolation, the use of solitary confinement today, the damage it causes and the unique impact of segregation on minorities, women and juveniles. Dr. Kupers illustrates the dehumanizing and inhumane nature of solitary through the experiences of prisoners who have been subjected to that practice. The abuse heaped on the men, women and children he has interviewed is shocking, and their stories will anger readers. . . . Dr. Kupers’ book should be required reading for all corrections professionals and lawmakers."
— Prison Legal News
This book is very informative and readable.... [For] corrections administrators, prison scholars, and students—both undergraduate and graduate.
— Criminal Justice Review
“Terry Kupers’s sustained focus on psychiatry and social justice has helped us to understand the dangerous symbiotic relationship between the failures of the public mental health system and the growth of the prison industrial complex. In Solitary, Kupers exposes the devastating consequences of solitary confinement and offers a valuable analysis of the racism and criminalization of mental illness that undergird it. An exceptionally well-researched account and a compelling call to action.”—Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz
 
“I had the good fortune to meet with Dr. Kupers shortly after my release from thirty-one years in prison, twenty-nine of them in solitary confinement at Louisiana State Prison in Angola. The depth of his understanding of the experience of solitary confinement and his compassion and wisdom were a welcome relief and comfort at this transitional time for me. This book accurately captures the moral depravity of this particular form of incarceration that has sadly burgeoned throughout the country in the last decades. Thanks to work like that of Dr. Kupers, it is possible that we may see an end to this brand of torture.”—Robert Hillary King, member of the Angola Three
 
“This is one of those practices that many of us are now saying, what were we possibly thinking? The author opens a door for the reader that had previously been closed twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week.”—Rick Raemisch, Executive Director, Colorado Department of Corrections
 
“Terry Kupers is a genuine hero in the fight to bring an end to the torture of solitary confinement. His work has given him a nearly unparalleled understanding of how solitary confinement operates on the ground and how it destroys the minds and wrecks the lives of those condemned to live in concrete boxes for years or even decades. His book is an impassioned, informed, down-to-earth, and highly readable account of all he has learned over the years, full of the real stories of people in solitary, insights of other experts, and concrete ideas for how prison officials, advocates, and mental health professionals can work together to end this human rights crisis in our midst.”—James Ridgeway, investigative journalist, director of Solitary Watch, and coeditor of Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement

“Dr. Kupers gives us a front row seat to America’s tragic experiment in mass incarceration and one of its most devastating, cruel, and painful practices: solitary confinement. Kupers’s unflinching insight into the hidden world of prisons exposes America at its darkest, but at the same time offers concrete solutions and hope for a safer, more effective, and humane criminal justice system.”—Amy Fettig, Deputy Director, American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project
 
“Terry Kupers’s wisdom, humanism, and generosity have helped advocates and litigators across the United States—not to mention countless prisoners—seeking to curb solitary confinement. His commitment to the well-being and dignity of every person behind bars has shaped his work and immeasurably enriched the prison reform movement. We are all in his debt.”—Jamie Fellner, former Director, US Program, Human Rights Watch
 
“The most prominent psychiatric expert witness in prison solitary confinement litigation is now the most important author in the field. The analysis is powerful and fits within a dramatic narrative of actual cases: inmates broken by the terrifying isolation that is solitary confinement.”—Fred Cohen, Professor Emeritus, University at Albany, State University of New York, and Executive Editor, Correctional Law Reporter

Awards

  • loria Huntley Award 2020 2020, National Alliance on Mental Illness