Film Review: Solitary

• Author: Mark T. Palermo
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X18782413
• Subject Matter: Film Review

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2018, Vol. 62(12) 3984 –3987

© The Author(s) 2018

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Film Review

Film Review

Jacobson, K., Goldman, J., & Mitchell, K. (Producers). (2016). Solitary [Documentary]

(K. Jacobson, Director). 1 hr 30 min. HBO Documentary Films

Reviewed by Mark T. Palermo, The Law, Art and Behavior Foundation, Amsterdam, The

Netherlands.

Email: mt.palermo@lawandbehavior.org

DOI: 10.1177/0306624X18782413

Solitary is a powerful and unsettling documentary by filmmaker Kristi Jacobson. The

film is a 1-hr-30-min “sentence” to the Red Onion State Prison, a super-maximum

security prison in Wise County, Virginia. It is a lucid account of the lives of a small

number of segregated inmates and, to a certain extent, of the Correctional Officers

who, at least for the duration of their shifts, experience and share the same confined

circumstances. The film has the capacity to draw one in, to the point of feeling, almost

from the beginning, a disquieting sense of captivity. In a straightforward and unflinch-

ing manner, it allows the viewer into the life of a total institution and it effectively

describes the multifarious aspects of solitary confinement, also known as segregation,

a form of incarceration characterized by long-term isolation of inmates.

The long-term segregation of prisoners came under presidential scrutiny in the

United States in 2016 due to its reported overuse. The concerns over its harmful effects

and its ineffectiveness in the actual rehabilitation of offenders, alongside the dangers

of self-harm consequent to its implementation, particularly in the case of, but not lim-

ited to, the mentally ill inmate, alongside the long-lasting consequences of the prac-

tice, have resulted in a ban on its use with juvenile offenders, given their developmental

stage, and to a gradual decline in its utilization. This, in addition to the inhumane

aspects of the type of confinement, presumably also in light of its costs. Not unlike the

deinstitutionalization of psychiatry.

Nonetheless, solitary confinement represents a reality which a sizable percentage

of the United States prison population, anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000, live daily,

and in many, too many instances, for several years. This is certainly the case of the

inmates interviewed in this documentary.

Owing to an original Quaker idea of replacement of capital and corporal punish-

ment with the redeeming effects of isolation, solitude, introspection, and Bible read-

ing, which were believed to lead to repentance and reformation, solitary confinement

became over time an instrument available to isolate habitual or recidivistic dangerous

782413IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X18782413International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyFilm Review

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