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Shane Bauer was one of three American backpackers imprisoned in Iran after being detained in 2009 on the Iraq-Iran border. Bauer penned a recent article for Mother Jones magazine comparing his conditions in the Iranian prison with that of prisoners in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. Shockingly, he concluded that conditions in California prisons are worse than Iranian prisons.

California is one of thirty-three states employing “Supermax” prisons or super-maximum prisons which segregate criminals who pose a security risk from the general prison population. Secure Housing Units or SHUs currently hold up to 4,000 people in extended isolation in California alone.

As a rule, inmates in SHUs throughout the country are locked up for twenty-three hours a day with one hour outside their concrete windowless cells for exercise in a sixteen by twenty-five foot “dog run.” Prisoners endure cramped quarters, overcrowding and social interaction limited to slots in their doors. They have thin pieces of foam instead of proper mattresses, no access to phone calls and endure constantly demoralizing treatment from prison guards. Inmates who endure years in solitary confinement are often written off by authorities, and lack programs for education and/or rehabilitation.

But one academic, over a decade ago, tried an audacious experiment of teaching Shakespeare to solitary confined prisoners.

GUEST: Dr. Laura Bates, an English Professor at Indiana State University launched her Shakespeare in Shackles program – the first of its kind – in Indiana’s Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, and has expanded the highly successful program to other facilities. Her forthcoming book about the program is entitled “Shakespeare Saved My Life”: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard.

Laura Bates is speaking this Saturday at the TedX UCLA conference. More about the conference online at www.tedxucla.org.