Abstract

"Do the Crime, Do the Time," is a commonplace formula for the meaning of incarceration. But time is precisely what a person is prevented from doing under conditions of incarceration. The prison regime becomes increasingly inhuman as time is displaced, represented in the extreme manifestation of solitary confinement, where all meaning of time is purged to the point that "the box" in New York houses 4.4 percent of inmates and accounts for 31.6 percent of suicides as reported in 2001.