Keramet Reiter

"Terry Fitzsimmons and the Quest for an End to Solitary Confinement" is the basis for a TV series currently in development. Pine Box Parole begins with convicted murderer Terry Fitzsimmons hanging himself in Kingston Penitentiary. Subsequent chapters delve into the killer's background and describe the senseless killings upon which he embarks after spending years in solitary confinement. Prison lawyer John L Hill, attempts to defend Fitzsimmons by putting the blame on the prison system for creating a monster. Part II of the book contains searing stories of five of Hill's imprisoned clients, including the, 'natural born killer' Clifford Olson, and Inderjit Sigh Reyat, the only person to be convicted of the bombing Air India Flight 182. The foreword is by Raphael Rowe, whose career as an investigative journalist and television host was born as a result of spending 12 years in prison for crimes he did not commit. The afterword is by Keramet Reiter a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and at the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine.

How America’s prisons turned a “brutal and inhumane” practice into standard procedure Originally meant to be brief and exceptional, solitary confinement in U.S. prisons has become long-term and common. Prisoners spend twenty-three hours a day in featureless cells, with no visitors or human contact for years on end, and they are held entirely at administrators’ discretion. Keramet Reiter tells the history of one “supermax,” California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, whose extreme conditions recently sparked a statewide hunger strike by 30,000 prisoners. This book describes how Pelican Bay was created without legislative oversight, in fearful response to 1970s radicals; how easily prisoners slip into solitary; and the mental havoc and social costs of years and decades in isolation. The product of fifteen years of research in and about prisons, this book provides essential background to a subject now drawing national attention.