The central problem with this account is that an accurate picture of this prison, or any prison for that matter, is not nearly as stark. Not all of the corrections officials are heroes. Not all of the gang members are villains beyond the terms of their original offenses (in fact, not all the gang members are even gang members). And some of those rules, and the theories behind them, have been discredited in law or fact.

For these reasons, and others, a number of experts in what I like to call “prison law” have sharply criticized Wood’s piece. Their criticism is rather uncomplicated: By excluding dissident voices—failing to quote advocates, mental health counselors, defense attorneys, or even inmates—Wood’s piece is incomplete and ultimately misleading. It privileges the perspective of corrections officials and their supporters, which perpetuates some popular and unfortunately facile stereotypes about gangs and prisons.

Wood’s defense of his approach (and I take him at his word) is that the scope of his article is limited to how gangs operate and that he therefore had no obligation to dive into topics he would consider tangential. But a primer on the contentious legal issues surrounding prison gangs is integral to any story about those gangs. And any prison story in America today that does not include some reference to the mental-health care provided (or more aptly not provided) to inmates is, I would say, inherently problematic.

At Mother Jones, Shane Bauer has written what I consider to be a thorough and fair critique of Wood’s work, which I’d recommend to anyone. What I want to do here simply identify a few of the ways in which the piece was lacking crucial context.

Wood provides a colorful account of the contraband prisoners smuggle into their cells—lots of things stuffed into lots of orifices—but there is no mention in his piece about the role that prison staff play in assisting with that smuggling, even though there are plenty of stories, based in California and elsewhere, chronicling this phenomenon. Given Wood’s limited sources, this omission shouldn’t come as a surprise. No one would expect the warden at Pelican Bay or his spokesman to highlight or even mention the ways in which corrections officers aid and abet in the dissemination of contraband. But the truth is that officials at Pelican Bay are partly responsible for the contraband that flows into the facility. They know it. And the reader should, too.

The reader should likewise know about the complicated, evolving, and increasingly dubious relationship between “gang-control strategies” and the use of solitary confinement. Such isolation, on the downswing now across the nation, is one of the most controversial issues in criminal justice today. And we know precisely how most corrections officers feel about it. They like it, regardless of any long-term implications it may have for the inmate so incarcerated. But this entrenched view—that isolation is necessary, that it does more good than harm—has never been more challenged than it is today from virtually every corner of the criminal-justice community. The voices of these challengers were absent from Wood’s piece: He didn’t quote one judge or senator or state prisons’ chief. If you want good context about life in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay, perspective that undermines Wood’s portrayal of isolation within the prison, read this excellent piece by Benjamin Wallace-Wells, published this past February in New York Magazine.