Most offenders remain in their cell 23 hours a day, seven days a week at Red Onion State Prison, a supermax prison built on an Appalachian mountaintop. An interviewee reveals this shocking fact in a newly released trailer for Kristi Jacobson’s timely HBO documentary “Solitary.” A prisoner observes, “It’s, I guess you could say, inhumane.” “All it’s doing is turning us into caged animals,” another inmate comments.
Filmed at Red Onion State Prison, which holds up to 500 prisoners in 8'x10' solitary confinement cells, “Solitary” explores the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners as well as the corrections officers tasked with enforcing the prison’s rules and regulations. Journalists describe the 40+ supermax prisons across the U.S. as “‘Black Zones’ — mysterious places where virtually no press are admitted, and even those few that are are stripped of all recording devices before being allowed on highly observed visits,” the doc’s official synopsis describes. Jacobson “managed to gain unprecedented — and unrestricted — access to Red Onion and its residents, capturing its chilling sounds and haunting atmosphere.”
The documentary features revealing and candid interviews with prisoners and corrections officers, providing “an unexpected window into life on both sides of the bars. Filmed over the course of one year, ‘Solitary’ tells the stories of people caught in the complex American penal system and raises provocative questions about punishment in America today.”
“I was initially interested in how kids are locked up in solitary confinement — in juvies, in jails, and in prisons,” Jacobson told Women and Hollywood. “I can recall in detail the night I read [surgeon and public health researcher] Dr. Atul Gawande’s New Yorker piece, “Hellhole,” and learned that there are something like 100,000 inmates in solitary across the U.S. — many locked in solitary for the most arbitrary reasons and most people don’t seem to know or care about it.” She observed, “Our criminal justice system is broken — especially for those who are on the fringes of our society, people who are poor and people of color. People locked in solitary are as forgotten as you can imagine.”
“I think we are conditioned to have certain feelings about those who are locked in our prisons,” Jacobson said. “The media portrayals, politicians, and the endless episodes of ‘Lockup’ all work hard to keep us scared of the ‘monsters’ locked up in our prisons that should be ignored and forgotten. But the thing we should most fear is what we are all capable of — which is to look the other way when faced with an uncomfortable truth, something that is happening right here, in our own country.”
“Solitary” premieres on HBO February 6. Check out the disturbing trailer below.
