Hell Is a Very Small Place
The “elegant but harrowing” (San Francisco Chronicle) collection of writing from solitary confinement that lifts the veil on this widespread modern-day form of torture
“For readers who have no sense of the nature of the punishment that is exacted in their name, this collection offers an unforgettable look at the peculiar horrors and humiliations involved in solitary confinement. . . . It is difficult to read this book without feeling shame.”
—Martin Garbus in the New York Review of Books
On any given day in America, more than 80,000 people are held in solitary confinement—held in utter isolation for twenty-three or twenty-four hours a day, moved there from the general population without any legal process or justification. In a “potent cry of anguish from men and women buried way down in the hole” (Kirkus Reviews), Hell Is a Very Small Place offers rare accounts from the people who are now or have been in solitary confinement. As Chelsea Manning wrote from her own solitary confinement cell, “The personal accounts by prisoners are some of the most disturbing that I have ever read.”
These firsthand accounts are supplemented by the writing of noted experts exploring the psychological, legal, ethical, and political dimensions of solitary confinement and a comprehensive introduction by Solitary Watch co-founders James Ridgeway and Jean Casella. Sarah Shourd, herself a survivor of more than a year of solitary confinement, writes eloquently in a preface about an experience that changed her life.
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