This Is Your Face on Solitary Confinement

Journalist Michael Montgomery of the Center for Investigative Reporting has done this remarkable photo essay - portraits of prisoners consigned to long term solitary confinement at Pelican Bay (California). It is published at Politico.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

I have posted here a number of times about Pussy Riot and their political persecution by the Russian government. Early in the fall one of the imprisoned young women Nadezhda Tolokonnikova published an open letter decrying the conditions of imprisonment. The authorities apparently deem her claims slanderous. For her efforts, Al Jazeera reports, she has been transferred to solitary confinement and - more troubling still - her family has reported that they have not heard from her since her transfer to solitary.

Bruce Jackson

Convict with Sunglasses - Cummins Prison Farm, Texas (1972).

Photograph © Bruce Jackson.

Mother Jones is running this photo essay of work by Bruce Jackson - from a decades long project on prison farms in Texas and Arkansas.
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P.S.: In the small world category, it seems that Jackson lives just down the road in Buffalo!

Juvenile In Justice

A 12-year-old juvenile in his windowless cell at Harrison County Juvenile Detention Centre in Biloxi, Mississippi, operated by Mississippi Security Services, a private company. There is currently a lawsuit against MSS that forced it to reduce the centre's population. An 8:1 inmate to staff ratio must now be maintained. Photograph © Richard Ross.

I've lifted the image above from this slide show at The Guardian of recent work by Richard Ross. I have posted (in pretty much wholly complimentary terms) on Ross's work several times here before.  This is powerful work - once again. It raises obvious questions. How many rich white kids are here? Why are these kids being stored away? The likely answer to the first question - not many, if any - largely answers the second.

No need to be naive. Many of these kids are troubled and need considerable, ongoing help in dealing with their troubles. Some might well be incorrigible. We'll never know if tossing the kid in a cell is our default option. There has got to be a better, cheaper (whether financially or in terms of life prospects for kids) way to address ten-twelve-fourteen year old kids and their troubles.?