Book review: David Polizzi, Solitary Confinement: Lived Experiences and Ethical Implications
| Author | Hedda Giertsen |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895818822547 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
514 Criminology & Criminal Justice 19(4)
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David Polizzi, Solitary Confinement: Lived Experiences and Ethical Implications, Policy Press/Shorts
research: Bristol/Chicago, 2017; 112 pp.: 9781447337539, £36.00 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Hedda Giertsen, University of Oslo, Norway
DOI: 10.1177/1748895818822547
In this book, David Polizzi presents other perspectives than those usually employed by
both prison authorities and criminologists in discussions on solitary confinement. He
brings to the forefront characteristics of prison systems, isolation and prisoners’ experi-
ences rarely displayed. The book starts with his encounter with solitary confinement,
isolation. As a pre-doctoral clinical intern with the Pennsylvania Department of
Corrections (DOC) he worked for half a year in a 400-bed housing unit that included
administratively and disciplinary custody prisoners (p. 1). Recognizing that these experi-
ences are part of an increasing use of isolation in prisons and entire institutions, this
question came to his mind of: ‘how we have got to this moment in correctional praxis
such that we are now returning to a philosophy of confinement that has clearly shown to
provide very little rehabilitative benefit’ (p. 14); and, as stated elsewhere, with heavily
disruptive effects on prisoners. This question is relevant also in Nordic countries, though
isolation is used to a lesser extent here than in the USA.
Polizzi discusses isolation according to three themes: history; the prison system; and
the impact of isolation on prisoners. These are common themes in discussing isolation,
but Polizzi’s perspectives are uncommon, most wanted, most needed. He goes beyond
the typical frames of prison policy aims and anticipated effects, and beyond typologies
of prisoners and their acts. This book is about the surroundings, systems, social rooms
that are created where inconceivable and bewildering interventions may happen, and
they do. Not by accident, nor as exceptions, but as integrated parts of their surroundings
that we, as societies, have established.
To answer his question, Polizzi describes the beginning of it all, when isolation was
introduced in the 1830s as a reform of good intentions, to improve prison conditions and
prisoners, by means of isolation, repentance and Bible. This was decisive; now isolation
was introduced into the prison system, and it has not left since. This legacy from the early
1800s informed the social landscape of crime control for centuries, and for so many
prisoners. In spite of a lack of wanted effects, rather producing severely damaging ones,
isolation has been upheld. Polizzi describes how various reasons and rationalities,
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