23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long‐Term Solitary Confinement. By Keramet Reiter. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

• Date: 01 December 2017
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12305

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on the development of American law, “The most corrosive message of

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legal history is the message of contingency” (23). Engel reminds us

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that contingency is not only corrosive— it is generative—it is the space

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within which we can write new myths. We need them. It is the role of

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humane law, the role of a humane state, to work to the benefit of

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those people when they are rendered incapable by pain both physical

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and existential. Even as he argues for primarily cultural change

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around our understanding of pain and law, Engel’s work makes the

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necessity of such policies of protection abundantly clear.

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References

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Engel, David (1984) “The Oven Bird’s Song: Insiders, Outsiders, and Personal Injuries

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in an American Community,”18 Law & Society Rev. 551–82.

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Haltom, William and & Michael McCann (2004) Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the

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Litigation Crisis. Chicago: Univ.of Chicago Press.

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Mensch, Elizabeth (1998) “The History of Mainstream Legal Thought,” in Kairys,

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David, ed., The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique (3

rd

ed.). New York: Basic

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Books. 23–53

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Saladoff, Susan, et al. (2011) Hot Coffee. Film.

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23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement.

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By Keramet Reiter. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

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Reviewed by Daniel LaChance, Department of History, Emory

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University

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In 1996, The Los Angeles Times revealed that guards in California’s

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maximum-security prisons had been staging gladiatorial contests

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between inmates. What’s more, the contests often occurred in the

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state’s “secure housing units,” solitary confinement facilities

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designed to keep the most dangerous inmates in continuous isola-

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tion. The guards would remotely unlock the cells of rival gang

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members at the same time, intentionally releasing them into the

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same space. Five men died when the fights got out of control and

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guards shot them.

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Scandals like this one erupted with startling regularity in the

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state’s secure housing units. But while inmates’ lawsuits led to some

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modest reforms, the units themselves were not declared unconstitu-

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tional by the courts or deemed inhumane by the state legislature.

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Indeed, at Pelican Bay Prison, the state’s first “supermax” facility,

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prison administrators spent the better part of the 1990s transform-

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ing what was once an extraordinary practice—round-the-clock iso-

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lation in an 80 square foot space—into a common one that some

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