While most lockdowns are intermittent (lasting from a few days to several weeks), an increasing number of state and federal prisons keep prisoners locked down for most or even all of the year. In addition, many prisons make people suffer through constant lockdown “cycles,” where prisoners get a very brief return to normal “gen pop” status before they are once again subject to several days or weeks of lockdown.

For those unfamiliar with the distinction between solitary confinement and lockdown, the latter is considered far more severe, as prisoners have no routines or any real rights whatsoever under lockdown. Solitary confinement is already rightly considered a form of torture under international law, but persons in solitary have a set routine, as stark as it is. Under lockdown, there is no such routine: There is no guarantee of exercise, showers are irregular at best, and access to phone, email or visitation are nonexistent. Education, religious activities, rehabilitative programs, psychiatric intervention to crises, access to commissary (“the store,” where somewhat healthier food and vitamins as well as soap can be bought) are typically denied or are nearly impossible to get. Meetings with attorneys come to a halt or are hard to obtain. People under lockdown are often not even given basic hygiene materials such as soap or toothpaste.

Throughout modern American carceral history, lockdowns have been reserved for major disruptive events that ostensibly threatened the lives of staff, prisoners or the surrounding community. Justifications for full lockdowns would typically only include prisoner escapes, murders of staff or prisoners, and large-scale violent prison riots, and they typically ended within days or a few weeks at most. Even then, they would almost always be contained to one unit or prison, not across an entire state or the whole nation.

Those days are gone. Lockdowns are now issued for almost any reason, according to interviews with a wide array of prisoners, attorneys, advocates and loved ones on the outside of prison walls. Barbee describes a sense of hopelessness and bewilderment on the part of those who have no way of knowing what is happening inside or if their family members in prison are even alive. Lockdowns happen so fast that prisoners rarely have the opportunity to inform anyone who cares about them.

Prison lockdowns have intensified in both duration and levels of abuse and deprivation over the years.

In addition, many other prison facilities are mimicking key facets of lockdown status even if prisoners technically remain in “gen pop.” Such examples include severe limits on access to confidential legal counsel, denial of family visitation without explanation, returned email or postal communication without justification, and many other restrictions that violate both constitutional rights and prison regulations.

The move toward lockdowns is functioning as a strategic manner of eroding an already paltry level of civil/human rights protections for prisoners within the U.S. carceral system.