Movement Inside and Outside of Prison

The vast majority of work on social movements concerns how people ‘on the streets’ mobilize material and symbolic resources in order to persuade people to expend time and take abnormal risks in hopes of achieving movement goals. ² Prisons are often regarded as places of confinement and immobility, especially cellular prisons and even more especially regimes of cellular isolation. Beginning with the H-Blocks in Northern Ireland during 1976-1981, there are many experiences of long-term cellular isolation around the world. The most notable examples are supermax prisons and security housing units (SHUs) in the United States after 1984 (now holding over 100,000 prisoners) and ‘F-type’ prisons of Turkey (housing 5000 mostly political prisoners). I argue here that prisons with cellular isolation are places of movement and communication, regardless of architecture and regime.