Please join the LBJ School of Public Affairs Center for Health and Social Policy (CHASP) and the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (CSRD) on Thursday, February 2, 2017 for a talk by Dr. Keramet Reiter, author of the new book "23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement."
Reiter is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and at the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine. She has been an associate at Human Rights Watch and testified about the impacts of solitary confinement before state and federal legislators.
Originally meant to be brief and exceptional, solitary confinement in U.S. prisons has become long-term and common. Prisoners spend twenty-three hours a day in featureless cells, with no visitors or human contact for years on end, and they are held entirely at administrators’ discretion. Reiter tells the history of one “supermax,” California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, whose extreme conditions recently sparked a statewide hunger strike by 30,000 prisoners. In "23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement", Reiter describes how Pelican Bay was created without legislative oversight, in fearful response to 1970s radicals; how easily prisoners slip into solitary; and the mental havoc and social costs of years and decades in isolation. The product of fifteen years of research in and about prisons, this book provides essential background to a subject now drawing national attention.
The presentation will be followed by a panel addressing the use of solitary confinement in Texas prisons, with LBJ School Senior Lecturer and CHASP faculty affiliate Michele Deitch and ACLU Texas Senior Policy Strategist Matthew Simpson.
Doors open at 5:15 PM and the presentation begins at 5:30 PM. Light snacks will be provided.