Trevor Paglen

The Oubliette
The medieval dungeon, constructed in the foundations of castle towers, sometimes contained an additional prison-within-a-prison. This hole in the dungeon, called the Oubliette, from the French word meaning “to forget” was a small hold in the dungeon into which prisoners were either thrown or lured. Prisoners in the Oubliette were left to starve, drown when the groundwater rose, or simply forgotten and left to die.

SHU
The Security Housing Unit (SHU) is a prison-within-a-prison, reserved for what the CDC calls “the worst of the worst.” SHU prisoners are kept in windowless, 6 by 10 foot cells, 23½ hours a day, for years at a time. People held under these conditions develop what is known as “SHU Syndrome” – the degradation of mental faculties caused by extreme isolation. Conditions in American SHUs are routinely the target of international human rights campaigns. In 1996, a team from the United Nations assigned to investigate torture described SHU conditions as “inhuman and degrading.” The California Department of Corrections operates four Security Housing Units in its system. Pelican Bay, Corcoran, California Correctional Institution, and Valley State Prison for Women hold 1,292, 1,204, 458, and 44 inmates respectively.

Stammheim
If the Oubliette signifies an historical antecedent to the SHU, a 20th Century antecedent is found in Stammheim, West Germany. Stammheim was built specifically to house and try the captured members of the Baader-Meinhof gang, otherwise known as the Red Army Faction. It was at the time considered the most secure prison on the planet, with the exclusive cadre of inmates locked in total isolation. The effects of solitary confinement – psychosis, insanity, and suicide – had been first documented by Quaker reformists in the early 19th Century and were confirmed in the 20th Century by Cold War CIA researchers. When built, Stammheim was popularly thought to be a laterally-instituted death-sentence imposed by a state with no legal means of capital punishment. On October 17, 1977 Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Andreas Baader died from gunshot wounds in their solitary cells.