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.
