“For readers who have no sense of the nature of the punishment
that is exacted in their name, this collection offers an
unforgettable look at the peculiar horrors and humiliations involved
in solitary confinement. . . . It is difficult to read this book
without feeling shame.”
—Martin Garbus
in the New York Review of Books
On any given day in
America, more than 80,000 people are held in solitary
confinement—held in utter isolation for twenty-three or twenty-four
hours a day, moved there from the general population without any
legal process or justification. In a “potent cry of anguish from
men and women buried way down in the hole” (Kirkus Reviews), Hell
Is a Very Small Place offers rare accounts from the people who
are now or have been in solitary confinement. As Chelsea Manning
wrote from her own solitary confinement cell, “The personal
accounts by prisoners are some of the most disturbing that I have
ever read.”
These firsthand
accounts are supplemented by the writing of noted experts exploring
the psychological, legal, ethical, and political dimensions of
solitary confinement and a comprehensive introduction by Solitary
Watch co-founders James Ridgeway and Jean Casella. Sarah Shourd,
herself a survivor of more than a year of solitary confinement,
writes eloquently in a preface about an experience that changed her
life.
