Abstract
Social scientists have never fully resolved the different findings of psychological and sociological studies of long-term imprisonment, in which the former have tended to conclude that extended confinement has few deleterious effects, while the latter have highlighted existential and relational pain. In Prisoners, Solitude and Time, O’Donnell points us to a potential explanation for these different findings, suggesting that, since forms of extreme confinement push individuals back into the life of the mind, while they are mentally corrosive for some – and should not be defended – they can be enlightening for others: those who are able to travel mentally even when their bodies are so deeply confined.
The first chapters of the book are largely historical and comprise a re-evaluation of orthodox conclusions about the uniform impact of solitary confinement. Tracing its origins in religiously oriented ambitions to reform prisoners through enforced moral introspection and highlighting its different forms (most of which were a compromised version of pure solitude), O’Donnell provides a precise overview of systems of separate and silent punishment. Drawing on a range of empirical studies, he goes on to question the degree to which solitary confinement was quite as corrosive and long-lasting in its damage as has generally been assumed.
Much of the aim of the book is to emphasise how such forms of imprisonment are resisted, and to bring into focus the astonishing ‘durability of the individual under even the most arduous of circumstances’ (p. 33). O’Donnell is careful to note the importance of context and intent, contrasting the redemptive aims of earlier forms of solitary with the thoroughly malign world of the supermax, where ‘the eye at the door is replaced by the camera; and the occasional word of comfort of disparagement is replaced by a blanket of silence’ (p. 55). Again, after detailing the origins of supermax and providing an unsentimental account of the particular kind of torture imposed by its ‘no-touch’, psychologically menacing regime, O’Donnell begins to elaborate the ‘uneven’ ways in which this form of confinement is experienced, and the possibility that some individuals might not just survive it but might feel themselves to be strengthened, enlightened and enriched by such conditions. O’Donnell thus asserts that, as well as overstating the ‘the universality and depths of its harms’, existing scholarship has glossed over the ‘positive impacts’ (61) that can result, often in the form of spiritual growth.
The second half of the book focuses on the experience of time, an aspect of imprisonment which O’Donnell rightly notes has been neglected to an extent that is bizarre, given that it is the essence of imprisonment. In the book’s strongest sections, O’Donnell captures the suffocating quality of time, and the difficulties that prisoners face in confronting a seemingly endless present, a blank and overwhelming future, and a past whose colour and currency soon begin to fade and devalue. He is attentive to the subjective experience of time, and its perceptual distortions. As he explains persuasively, time may pass slowly as it happens but appear to have flown in retrospect. At the same time, O’Donnell proposes a device – the ‘pain quotient’ – for considering in a more objective sense the burden of time within prison, determined by time to be served and life to be lived, which takes account of the prisoner’s age and life expectancy. In the book’s final chapter, he sets out a number of characteristics that seem to be shared by prisoners who do manage to withstand prolonged periods of solitary confinement: a sense of overarching purpose, a commitment to maximising the benefits of the present, an ability to remould the self, a resolution to adapt to the predicament as early as possible, and, often – to close the historical circle – some kind of spiritual or religious commitment.
O’Donnell is at pains to stress that his emphasis on human resilience is not to be interpreted as an argument in favour of solitary confinement. It is a point to which he returns on a number of occasions, at times almost tetchily, as if already in combat with an imagined critic. To his credit, since his analysis is in places rather heretical, O’Donnell simply wants to redress an imbalance in the way that solitary confinement has been understood. In this respect, he is faithful first to facts, and then to values, refusing to simplify or deform the former so as to avoid unpalatable statements, without in any way sacrificing the possibility of expressing a position that is clearly critical both of solitary confinement and its contemporary apotheosis, the supermax. O’Donnell notes that these forms of incarceration are largely – just not exclusively or straightforwardly – destructive; that they might be simultaneously harmful and beneficial; and that the fact that some people can endure traumatic and de-humanising practices is not an argument in their favour (just as this finding would not entail a case for sexual abuse or serious illness).
Overall, this is a wonderful, thorough and nuanced piece of scholarship. It is balanced and dispassionate and is a lesson in scholarly pluralism, combining historical research, detailed reviews of psychological studies, and analysis of prisoner memoirs and letters. It is also tremendously stimulating, not only in the manner in which it is written, but in presenting so many opportunities for other scholars to build on its claims, for example, about the various ways in which prisoners manage time. The latter chapters, in particular, contain an extraordinary wealth of insight. Finally, this is a profoundly humanistic text, emphasising both the appalling pain caused by extreme confinement and the extraordinary capacity of people to endure and overcome such treatment. As O’Donnell argues, ‘the sheer fact of survival and the indomitability of the human spirit that it indicates show that isolation does not work, especially if it is intended to extinguish the flame of individuality and resistance’ (p. 119). Running throughout the text – although not quite organized into a central argument – is the sense that humans are relational beings, in need of touch, empathy and direct, personal contact, and are sometimes able to develop as humans despite treatment by the state that is intentionally inhumane.