Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-274) and index.
Contents:
Introduction -- Part 1: The Hole. A Day in the Hole ; Solitary Confinement in Context ; Ideal types -- Part 2: Scholar's Story. Recruiting Inmates ; Getting to the hole ; Scholar's Story ; Racism in Solitary ; The cell assignment ; It's "culture" not "race' -- Part 3: CO Porter and Dr. Emma. Prison Sitings ; Prison Town-Larrabee ; Dr. Emma and the Professional Staff ; Microtel ; It's either this or the coal mine ; Sometimes I sleep in my car -- Part 4: Fifty's Story. Dehumanization ; Language ; Studies with Monkeys ; Choosing the hole ; Hygiene products ; The mirror ; Food ; Time ; Mail ; Extreme violence -- Part 5: Marina's Story. Welcome to SCI-Women ; The women's hole ; Meeting the Mass Killer: Solitary confinement is her "home" ; The BMU ; CO Lisa ; Wendi ; Marina -- Part 6: CO Travis. We are Trump's Forgotten ; Solitary should be "hard" time: this isn't a daycare! ; Correctional PTSD ; Faking mental illness to get a candy bar ; "Therapy" with Dr. Emma ; Programming ; TVs, Trays and [Flush] Toilets ; The Flipped Script ; The Job of the CO, Work of the CO ; Contact and intimate surveillance ; White racial resentment -- Part 7: White Supremacy and the Lies White People Tell Themselves. The Lie Built on a Foundation of White Supremacy ; Critical Race Theory: The Lie is Confirmed in Solitary Confinement ; Yet Another Lie: To be Black is to be a Criminal ; From Solitary to the Streets ; What about those who "chose" solitary? ; Emancipated Slave and the White Sharecropper ; Dying By Whiteness ; Solitary Confinement: Reducing rather than (Re) Producing White Racial Resentment ; Strangers in their Own Land ; The Lies the COs Tell Themselves ; January 6, 2021---White nationalists storm the US Capitol -- Epilogue.
Summary:
"Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with inmates, correctional officers, and civilian staff conducted in solitary confinement units, Way Down in the Hole explores the myriad ways in which daily, intimate interactions between those locked up twenty-four hours a day and the correctional officers charged with their care, custody, and control produce and reproduce hegemonic racial ideologies. Smith and Hattery explore the outcome of building prisons in rural, economically depressed communities, staffing them with white people who live in and around these communities, filling them with Black and brown bodies from urban areas and then designing the structure of solitary confinement units such that the most private, intimate daily bodily functions take place in very public ways. Under these conditions, it shouldn't be surprising, but is rarely considered, that such daily interactions produce and reproduce white racial resentment among many correctional officers and fuel the racialized tensions that inmates often describe as the worst forms of dehumanization. Way Down in the Hole concludes with recommendations for reducing the use of solitary confinement, reforming its use in a limited context, and most importantly, creating an environment in which inmates and staff co-exist in ways that recognize their individual humanity and reduce rather than reproduce racial antagonisms and racial resentment"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.