Deep Confinement

“Deep Confinement is a masterful account of tragic places where violent and unstable men struggle to survive. With his characteristic acuity, Ben Crewe offers a nuanced analysis of risk and resistance, power and pride, compliance and coercion, and the fragility of hope in a stripped-back environment that thrums with danger.”

– Ian O’Donnell , Professor of Criminology at University College Dublin and author of  Prisoners, Solitude, and Time

“A nuanced, authoritative, thoughtful and compassionate account of the deepest end of the prison system in England and Wales. In this meticulously researched and beautifully written book, Ben Crewe shines a light on the inner workings of the Close Supervision Centres and explores the predictably tragic outcomes of confinement in highly controlled extreme environments.”

– Dr Sharon Shalev , author of  Supermax: Controlling Risk through Solitary Confinement

This open access book describes everyday life in Close Supervision Centres – special units within the England & Wales prison system that hold men considered too difficult or dangerous to be accommodated in mainstream prisons. Based on unprecedented access to these sites of ‘deep confinement’, and involving interviews with 40 men held within them, it documents in close and vivid detail the subjective experience of acutely controlled conditions, staff-prisoner dynamics, psychological power, and often tense relations between prisoners themselves. The analysis characterises the ‘CSC system’ as a kind of crucible: a highly intense social and relational environment, which places extreme men alongside each other in an environment of extreme restriction. In capturing the social and emotional texture of deep incarceration, including feelings ranging from hopelessness and distress to sanctuary and mental liberation, the book explores penal legitimacy, and what humans can endure, at the outer edges of state power.

Ben Crewe is Professor of Penology and Criminal Justice, and Deputy Director of the Prisons Research Centre, at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, UK.