Extreme Punishment : Comparative Studies in Detention, Incarceration and Solitary Confinement

This ground-breaking collection examines the erosion of the legal boundaries traditionally dividing civil detention from criminal punishment. The contributors empirically demonstrate how the mentally ill, non-citizen immigrants, and enemy combatants are treated like criminals in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Cover 1 Half-Title 2 Half-Title 3 Title 6 Copyright 7 Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Foreword 11 References 18 Acknowledgments 19 Notes on Contributors 21 Introduction 26 Chapter overview 31 Conclusion 36 References 37 1 Fear Suffused Hell-holes: The Architecture of Extreme Punishment 39 The contemporary relevance of Dante’s vision of Hell 40 The architecture of prison Hell 44 An alternative approach 50 Conclusion 52 Notes 53 References 54 2 The Limits of Punishment 57 The rise of regulation 59 Punishing identity 61 Legal fiction 66 Conclusion 70 Notes 71 References 71 Cases 71 Secondary Sources 71 3 Immigration, Detention, and the Expansion of Penal Power in the United Kingdom 75 Overview 76 Penal convergences 79 Penal divergences 81 Casting out the strangers among us 86 Conclusion 88 Notes 89 References 90 4 (Im)migrating Penal Excess: Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Case of Maricopa County, Arizona 93 The 287(g) program 95 Sheriff Arpaio’s trajectory in penal extremism 96 Delegation or transformation of law? 98 The marriage of 287(g) and Arpaio 102 The absorption into the local 102 Immigration and ‘crime control’ meld, ideologically and technologically 103 Expanded enforcement powers open up new territories of control 105 Putting the genie back in the bottle? 108 Conclusion 109 Notes 111 References 112 5 A New ‘Ecology of Cruelty’? The Changing Shape of Maximum-security Custody in England and Wales 116 Introduction: high-security imprisonment, risk, and danger 116 Maximum-security prisons and the crisis of trust 120 Race, religion, and the crisis of trust 128 Extreme punishment and its effects 131 Conclusion: challenging the new ecology of cruelty 134 Notes 136 References 137 6 Seclusive Space: Crisis Confinement and Behavior Modification in Canadian Forensic Psychiatric Settings 140 The phenomenological crisis of the secluded body 143 Confinement in historical context 147 Seclusion in/as behavior modification 152 Conclusion 155 References 157 7 Normalizing Exceptions: Solitary Confinement and the Micro-politics of Risk/Need in Canada 160 Ashley Smith: Micro-politics of the risk subject 163 Manipulative, not ill: Self-injury and the production of a ‘difficult to manage prisoner’ 166 Criminogenic and iatrogenic qualities of segregation 171 Organizational apathy: Knowing what else to do 173 Conclusions 175 Notes 176 References 177 8 Making Visible Invisible Suffering: Non-deliberative Agency and the Bodily Rhetoric of Tamms Supermax Prisoners 181 Tamms 185 Activism outside of Tamms 186 ‘Malingering’ and the difficulty of proving invisible harm 189 The supermax elicits extra-textual rhetorics of the body 195 Conclusion 198 Notes 199 References 200 9 Punishing Mental Illness: Trans-institutionalization and Solitary Confinement in the United States 202 Solitary confinement: The linchpin of trans-institutionalization 204 Darkness under fluorescent lights: Six psychologists’ perspectives 208 Between care and punishment 211 Evaluating reform 216 Note 218 References 218 10 Between Protection and Punishment: The Irregular Arrival Regime in Canadian Refugee Law 222 Legislating irregularity 225 Producing irregularity 228 Reproducing irregularity 235 Conclusion 237 Notes 239 References 241 Cases and Legislation 241 Secondary Sources 241 11 From Man to Beast: Social Death at Guantánamo 245 What is social death? 246 Guantánamo: The place and the people 248 Social death at Guantánamo 250 Social death after Guantánamo 258 Conclusion 262 Notes 264 References 265 Afterword 267 References 272 Index 274 Front Matter....Pages i-xxiv Introduction....Pages 1-13 Fear Suffused Hell-holes: The Architecture of Extreme Punishment....Pages 14-31 The Limits of Punishment....Pages 32-49 Immigration, Detention, and the Expansion of Penal Power in the United Kingdom....Pages 50-67 (Im)migrating Penal Excess: Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Case of Maricopa County, Arizona....Pages 68-90 A New ‘Ecology of Cruelty’? The Changing Shape of Maximum-security Custody in England and Wales....Pages 91-114 Seclusive Space: Crisis Confinement and Behavior Modification in Canadian Forensic Psychiatric Settings....Pages 115-134 Normalizing Exceptions: Solitary Confinement and the Micro-politics of Risk/Need in Canada....Pages 135-155 Making Visible Invisible Suffering: Non-deliberative Agency and the Bodily Rhetoric of Tamms Supermax Prisoners....Pages 156-176 Punishing Mental Illness: Trans-institutionalization and Solitary Confinement in the United States....Pages 177-196 Between Protection and Punishment: The Irregular Arrival Regime in Canadian Refugee Law....Pages 197-219 From Man to Beast: Social Death at Guantánamo....Pages 220-241 Afterword....Pages 242-248 Back Matter....Pages 249-255 Extreme Punishment examines the erosion of the legal boundaries that traditionally divide civil detention from criminal punishment. This collection of empirical studies illustrates how the mentally ill, non-citizen immigrants, and enemy combatants are treated as criminals in three of the world's oldest and wealthiest democracies: Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Each chapter relies on unprecedented access to the administrative black holes that increasingly characterize punishment. Together, the contributors explore how punishers exert power and how the punished experience that power. The book demonstrates that, through consolidated administrative power, new laws nominally focused on managing risk and preventing harm produce new criminal categories and newly criminalized people