The Special Housing Unit (known as the "SHU" or the "hole") is a mythical place in prison. Only a small percentage of the inmate population has ever visited there, but stories of the deprivation abound. It is the disciplinary unit used by the prison to punish offenders and to strike fear (and therefore compliance) into the general population. It is the ultimate punitive remedy for inmates who assault other inmates or staff, or who find a way to subvert the system to get drugs to feed their habits. Occasionally it is used as an overnight consequence for someone refusing to follow orders, and one night is usually enough to effect the desired compliance.
The SHU is like a catacomb. The hallways are long, very narrow and labyrinthine, brightly lit 24 hours a day by florescent lights. They echo with each footfall and with the jolting clang of the bolts of steel or barred doors being locked or unlocked or the booming voices of the guards. The pale grey cells are lined up in long rows with thick solid-steel doors, each with a four-inch by two-foot window covered in steel mesh. Each door also has a small round steel-mesh-covered hole for communication between its occupant and the guards outside in the hall. There is a slot in each door covered by its own padlocked steel cover for use in passing meal trays into the cell or for the inmates to pass their wrists through to be handcuffed prior to being taken from the cell.
Inside, the cells are a couple of feet smaller than the cells on the regular units, about 7x9. They are also pale grey with bare concrete floors and steel sheet-metal walls and ceiling. There is a square fluorescent light fixture covered in steel mesh attached to the ceiling. In the cell are two bunks, a 1x3-foot steel desk with a steel seat that rotates out on a bar, and a combination stainless steel sink and toilet. There are two vents high up on the wall, one to let in frigid air and one to let the air out. On the floor next to the toilet there is a paper that has been folded in fourths lengthwise upon which has been written the word "FLUSH." This is used to pass through the slit between the door and the door jamb to let the next passing guard know to flush your toilet. There is no mechanism to flush your own toilet inside the cell. A similar system is in place to turn the light on or off. The same slit between the door and jamb is used to send requests via a "cop-out" form to the guards or to pass through letters that the inmate is either sending or receiving.