Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison (California Series in Public Anthropology, 7)

331 Pages·2004·2.91 MB·English

by  Lorna A. Rhodes

TOTAL CONFINEMENT
CALIFORNIA SERIES IN PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY
The California Series in Public Anthropology emphasizes
the anthropologist’s role as an engaged intellectual. It continues
anthropology’s commitment to being an ethnographic witness, to
describing, in human terms, how life is lived beyond the borders
of many readers’ experiences. But it also adds a commitment,
through ethnography, to reframing the terms of public debate—
transforming received, accepted understandings of
social issues with new insights, new framings.
SERIES EDITOR:Robert Borofsky (Hawaii Pacific University)
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:Philippe Bourgois (UC San Francisco),
Paul Farmer (Partners in Health), Rayna Rapp (New York University),
and Nancy Scheper-Hughes (UC Berkeley)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS EDITOR: Naomi Schneider
1. Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death,
by Margaret Lock
2. Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel,
by Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh (with a Foreword by Hannan Ashrawi)
3. Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide,
edited by Alexander Laban Hinton (with a Foreword by Kenneth Roth)
4. Pathologies of Power: Structural Violence and the Assault on Health
and HumanRights, by Paul Farmer (with a Foreword by Amartya Sen)
5. Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, and the New America,
by Aihwa Ong
6. Chechnya: The Making of a War-Torn Society, by Valery Tishkov
7. Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison,
by Lorna A. Rhodes
8. Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope,
by Beatriz Manz
TOTAL CONFINEMENT
Madness and Reason
in the Maximum Security Prison
Lorna A. Rhodes
University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2004 by the Regents
of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rhodes, Lorna A. (Lorna Amarasingham)
Total confinement : madness and reason in the
maximum security prison / Lorna A. Rhodes.
p. cm.—(California series in public
anthropology ; 7)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN0-520-22987-8 (alk. paper).
—ISBN0-520-24076-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Solitary confinement—United States.
2. Prisoners—Mental health—United States.
3. Imprisonment—United States. 4. Prisons—
United States. I. Title.
HV9471.R473 2004
365'66—dc21 2003050138
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 06 05 04
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the
minimum requirements of ANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992
(R1997) (Permanence of Paper).8
For Lilamani

CONTENTS
Author’s Note ix
Preface xi
Introduction 1
Part I Conditions of Control
1. Controlling Troubles 21
2. The Choice to Be Bad 61
Part II Negotiating Treatment, Managing Custody
3. The Asylum of Last Resort 99
4. Custody and Treatment at the Divide 131
Part III Questions of Exclusion
5. The Games Run Deep 163
6. Struggling It Out 191
Glossary of Prison Terms 225
Appendix: Note on Research 227
Notes 231
Bibliography 283
Acknowledgments 299
List of Illustrations 301
Index 303
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is based on participation in dozens of situations and conversa-
tions and on over one hundred interviews conducted by me and others.
The observations and interactions described here took place over a num-
ber of years in seven prisons and in several other correctional settings.
Names and identifying features have been changed. In addition, some of
the descriptions of individuals and scenes contain elements taken from
more than one person, situation, or prison. They accurately reflect specific
events and conversations, but rearranged or conflated to preserve confi-
dentiality. With the exception of events in the last chapter, almost every-
thing described is based on more than one, and sometimes many, instances.
Quotations are from tape-recorded interviews or from notes made at the
time of interactions; they have been edited for length and style. In the in-
terest of confidentiality, I use generic terms such as “prison worker,” “men-
tal health worker,” and “custody supervisor” to designate individuals with
a variety of job titles. This book is about all-male institutions, and the mas-
culine pronoun is used throughout to refer to prisoners.
ix