The depth of imprisonment and the dilution of self

Abstract

Theoretically, the ‘depth of imprisonment’ refers to the spatial distance between a state of confinement and the surface of the world beyond the prison. Depth thus describes the prison's capacity to cause feelings of alienation from fellow prisoners, the prisoner society and the external community. Using voluntary isolation as a case, we advance the concept by arguing that deep forms of confinement also have the potential to distance prisoners from their own sense of self. Such effects are not reducible to alienation from others, amounting to an internal form of depth experienced as being in a state of free fall. With this, we discuss how depth refers not only to a surface, but also to an imagined endpoint, a floor.