Solitary Watch

by Mirilla Zhu

June 2, 2023

New from Solitary Watch:  In an article co-published by Solitary Watch and The Nation, Victoria Law reports on the Maryland Mandela Act, which has stalled in the state legislature controlled by Democrats. The bill received “unprecedented” support from AFSC 3, the state’s corrections officers union, as well as the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a nonprofit […]

by Voices from Solitary

May 30, 2023

Frank De Palma spent more than 22 years of a 43 year sentence in solitary confinement at a Nevada state prison. Released at 62, DePalma faced homelessness and destitution. Despite the lasting psychological trauma and hardships caused by his time in solitary, he says he is  “determined to speak out against the horror of solitary […]

by Victoria Law

May 25, 2023

This article is co-published with The Nation. Chloe Scheibe entered Maryland’s prison system in 2016. Unsure where to house a transgender woman in a male prison, officials placed her in administrative segregation. Administrative segregation, or ad seg, as it’s often called, is not intended for punishment, but nonetheless keeps a person in isolation.  Scheibe spent nearly […]

by Sara Vogel

May 24, 2023

New from Solitary Watch: A groundbreaking joint report from Solitary Watch ​and the advocacy coalition Unlock the Box shows that at least 122,840 people are locked daily in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails for 22 or more hours a day. Previous reports have offered an incomplete picture of how extensively the discredited practice […]

by Jean Casella

May 23, 2023

Solitary Watch and Unlock the Box sent out the following press release on the morning of May 23, 2023. Washington, DC — The watchdog group Solitary Watch and the advocacy coalition Unlock the Box today released a groundbreaking joint report showing that at least 122,840 people are locked daily in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons […]

by Mirilla Zhu

May 17, 2023

New From Solitary Watch: Katie Rose Quandt, Senior Contributing Writer for Solitary Watch, explores how the isolation of suicide watch in prisons and jails can exacerbate trauma and suffering, with sometimes fatal consequences. Quandt interviews a range of mental health experts and incarcerated individuals, including Anthony Gay, who was placed on suicide watch in an […]

by Sara Vogel

May 10, 2023

New From Solitary Watch: In an article co-published with The Nation, Victoria Law reports on the serious discrepancy between the passage and implementation of New York State’s HALT Solitary Confinement Act. The law, which went into effect on March 1, 2022, strictly limits what acts allow prison officials to isolate someone for longer than three […]

by Victoria Law

May 4, 2023

This article is co-published with The Nation. One year after New York’s HALT Solitary Confinement Act took effect, incarcerated people and advocates have filed suit against the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS, for failing to comply with the law. In 2021, after nearly a decade of advocacy efforts, state lawmakers passed Correctional Law […]

by Mirilla Zhu

May 3, 2023

New from Solitary Watch:  In April’s installation of “The Word from Solitary Watch,” contributing writer Sarah Shourd writes about the extreme oppression of solitary confinement, and the incredible resilience of the human spirit in the face of it. Shourd highlights the organizing that has taken place inside prisons over the decades, from the Attica uprising […]

by Sarah Shourd

April 27, 2023

In our society we’re taught to exile the “dark” or “shadow” side of our human nature even farther into the darkness. We push the hurt, wounded psyche into the depths of our shame, where we hope to hide it from everyone at all costs. Prisons are a form of collective exile, a place where we […]

by Sara Vogel

April 26, 2023

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: The Federal District Court in Manhattan has ordered New York City to pay up to $53 million to people illegally held in solitary confinement. New York’s Board of Correction requires people held in pretrial detention to undergo a fair hearing before being transferred from general […]

by Mirilla Zhu

April 19, 2023

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: Joshua McLemore, a 29-year-old man who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, died of starvation after being held naked and alone in a padded isolation cell at Indiana’s Jackson County Jail. A complaint filed in federal court alleges that the jail violated McLemore’s Fourteenth Amendment rights and […]

by Sara Vogel

April 12, 2023

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: On April 7, a federal District Court judge in Phoenix issued a sweeping Order and Permanent Injunction in response to “constitutional violations in the provision of health care and in housing certain prisoners in isolation” in Arizona’s state prisons. The class-action lawsuit, in which incarcerated […]

by Mirilla Zhu

April 5, 2023

New from Solitary Watch: In “The Word from Solitary Watch” for March 2023, Jean Casella writes about how prisons are where America hides the problems it chooses not to confront, and how solitary confinement—often described as a “prison within a prison”—is where prisons hide theirs. Casella quotes from an essay by incarcerated writer Thomas Whitaker, […]

by Jean Casella

March 31, 2023

Nearly a decade ago, in a piece published by The Intercept, the late James Ridgeway wrote about U.S. prisons and jails as the locations for a new kind of “banishment,” in which long-term or permanent outcasts are sent to live apart from society—not in some distant land, but in walled-off enclaves not far from our […]

by Mirilla Zhu

March 29, 2023

The Correctional Association of New York released a 41-page report documenting “numerous departures” from the letter and spirit of the HALT Solitary Confinement Law. While the overall number of people in solitary confinement in New York has decreased by more than two-thirds following the implementation of HALT, the report finds that facilities have continued to […]

by Mirilla Zhu

March 22, 2023

Youth at the Baltimore County Detention Center have been locked in squalid, rat-infested cells for 23 hours a day, according to a letter from the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. Youth are not separated from adults at the facility and students with disabilities are not afforded individualized educational plans, in violation of federal law. The […]

by Mirilla Zhu

March 15, 2023

Journalists have obtained video footage of a force feeding at a Colorado federal prison after more than three years of litigation. The footage shows Mohammad Salameh being force fed in 2015 in ADX Florence’s H Unit, one of the country’s most restrictive housing units, in which individuals are barred from nearly all communication with the […]

by Mirilla Zhu

March 9, 2023

Todd Ashker, an organizer of the Pelican Bay hunger strikes and lead plaintiff of a lawsuit that led to significant changes in California’s use of solitary confinement, has been held in solitary for nearly six years since the changes went into effect. Last week, a federal judge ruled that Ashker’s placement in solitary was an […]

by Mirilla Zhu

March 1, 2023

New from Solitary Watch:  A new fact sheet from Solitary Watch looks at the relationship between solitary confinement and prison violence. The fact sheet, written by Sara Rain Tree, draws from a broad range of research and reporting to debunk the myth that solitary reduces prison violence, and explores how limiting solitary can in fact […]

by Jean Casella

February 28, 2023

Today, Solitary Watch is publishing the fourth in a new series of fact sheets offering facts, analysis, and resources on a variety of topics related to solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and immigrant and juvenile facilities. This fact sheet, written by by Sara Rain Tree, addresses misconceptions about solitary confinement and prison violence, and […]

by Mirilla Zhu

February 22, 2023

New from Solitary Watch:  In an essay for our Voices from Solitary series, L. LeDonne describes her experience in solitary while incarcerated in Connecticut’s York Correctional Institution. A musician by training, LeDonne wrote “Seg Song” as a response to the isolation of solitary. “The only remedy I knew was to write, to create, so I […]

by Jean Casella

February 21, 2023

Solitary Watch is pleased to announce the release of the French translation of our FAQ page. This is by far our most visited resource, and we wanted to make it available to all French speakers as well. From basic statistics to psychological and neurological effects to costs, legal precedents, and reform efforts, our FAQ provides well-sourced answers […]

by Voices from Solitary

February 20, 2023

L. LeDonne was incarcerated from 2017 to 2020 at York Correctional Institution, Connecticut’s state prison for women. She was 54 years old when she was sent there. LeDonne now lives in Shelton, Connecticut. She continues to make music and has received grants to launch a non-profit music program for formerly incarcerated people to help process […]

by Mirilla Zhu

February 15, 2023

At the “Restorative Housing Unit” in New Jersey’s South Woods State Prison, staff have reportedly been using brute force and encouraging fights between incarcerated people. The so-called Restorative Housing Units were created in 2019 by the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act, which placed limits on solitary confinement, but advocates say the units are no different than […]

by Mirilla Zhu

February 9, 2023

New from Solitary Watch: In the latest in our series of monthly dispatches, The Word from Solitary Watch, Staff Writer and Editor Vaidya Gullapalli explores how solitary confinement is used to retaliate against individuals in prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers who participate in strikes and other forms of peaceful advocacy. “Imprisoned people who protest […]