Warehousing for Death

Abstract

Information gathered from personal interviews with condemned prisoners in Alabama's Holman Prison and from observations of the setting and its inhabitants is used to trace the prisoners' patterns of life and adjustment on death row. The study commences with a depiction of the physical set ting and custodial regime of death row, considers next the social world of the condemned, and concludes with a description of the cumulative hu man experience in this environment. The adjustment problems of pow erlessness, fear, and emotional emptiness are examined-the pow erlessness of men suffocated by close confinement, the fear of men marked for execution, and the apathy of men denied human contact and support.

Death row emerges as an environment in which prisoners feel impo tent, afraid, and alone, defenseless against their keepers and unable to alter their fate. A few prisoners deteriorate dramatically; all experience, in varying degrees, a living death. This image of death row-as a living death- symbolizes the human environment of death row and the human conse quences of confinement in this oppressive penal milieu.