The Hole

Abstract

M any inmates call solitary confinement “the hole.” It is often served in a dark room where inmates who have caused difficulty within the prison spend twenty-three hours a day; they have time outside for one hour. The room is designed to allow little possibility for danger; a simple bed or mattress sits alone near an uncovered toilet. As the most imprisoning section of prison, it is the defining part for me. Prison is a “hole,” in perhaps all of the connotations of that word. Each is usually decrepit and dirty, decorated in fading paint and full of hollow sounds of doors locking and people screaming.