

No Human Contact
Solitary Confinement, Maximum Security, and Two Inmates Who Changed the System
Author: Pete Earley
Narrator: Rich Miller
Unabridged: 9 hr 20 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 04/25/2023
Categories: Nonfiction, Social Science, Penology, History, Us History, Modern History
Synopsis
Each initially spent nine months in a mattress-sized cell where the lights burned twenty-four hours a day. They were clothed only in boxer shorts, completely sealed off from the outside world with only their minds to occupy their time. Fountain turned to religion and endured twenty-one-years before dying alone of natural causes. Silverstein became a skilled artist and lasted thirty-six years, longer than any other American prisoner in isolation.
Pete Earley—the only journalist to be granted face-to-face access with Silverstein—examines profound questions at the heart of our justice system. Were Silverstein and Fountain born bad? Or were they twisted by abusive childhoods? Did incarceration offer them a chance of rehabilitation—or force them to commit increasingly heinous crimes? No Human Contact elicits a uniquely deep and uncomfortable understanding of the crimes committed, the use of solitary confinement, and the reality of life, redemption, and death behind prison walls.