Overview

Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with prisoners, correctional officers, and civilian staff conducted in solitary confinement units, Way Down in the Hole explores the myriad ways in which daily, intimate interactions between those locked up twenty-four hours a day and the correctional officers charged with their care, custody, and control produce and reproduce hegemonic racial ideologies. Smith and Hattery explore the outcome of building prisons in rural, economically depressed communities, staffing them with white people who live in and around these communities, filling them with Black and brown bodies from urban areas, and then designing the structure of solitary confinement units such that the most private, intimate daily bodily functions take place in very public ways. Under these conditions, it shouldn't be surprising that such daily interactions produce and reproduce white racial resentment among many correctional officers and fuel the racialized tensions that prisoners often describe as the worst forms of dehumanization. Way Down in the Hole concludes with recommendations for reducing the use of solitary confinement, reforming its use in a limited context, and most importantly, creating an environment in which prisoners and staff coexist in ways that recognize their individual humanity and reduce racial antagonism and resentment.

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Earl Smith is a professor of women and gender studies at the University of Delaware in Newark. He also holds the position of Emeritus Rubin Distinguished Professor of American Ethnic Studies and Sociology at Wake Forest University. He is the author of thirteen books, including Policing Black Bodies: How Black Lives Are Surveilled and How to Work for Change and The Social Dynamics of Family Violence (both with Angela J. Hattery). Angela J. Hattery is a professor of women and gender studies and codirector of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Gender-Based Violence at the University of Delaware in Newark. She is the author of eleven books, including Policing Black Bodies: How Black Lives Are Surveilled and How to Work for Change and The Social Dynamics of Family Violence (both with Earl Smith). Machelle Williams has crafted an easy storytelling style from twenty-three years as a corporate trainer and keynote diversity speaker. Since 2016 she has successfully produced over twenty-eight audiobook projects. Machelle's voice is nuanced, ranging from soft and soothing to dramatic and smoky. She specializes in mysteries and thrillers; her bespoke repertoire also includes cozy mysteries and nonfiction, as well as titles in the religious, urban, and noire genres. When you need a narrator to take your listener to the edge of their seat and their breath away, trust the telling to Machelle.

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