“When you first get out you’re happy to be free, you enjoy inhaling air that’s not in a concrete bunker,” said a man who had spent 18 years in solitary confinement in the infamous Security Housing ...

In 1995 a federal court examining the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of the Pelican Bay State Prison—a California supermax —found that “many, if not most, inmates in the SHU experience some ...