Solitary Watch

by Kwaneta Harris

April 25, 2025

The first time I saw a noose made from torn bed sheets, I thought it was a dream. Eight and a half years in solitary confinement have shown me it’s a recurring nightmare. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve pressed my face against cold steel, screaming for help while watching someone’s daughter, sister, […]

by Djamilah Diabate

April 23, 2025

New This Week from Solitary Watch: In the latest installment of Voices from Solitary, Redhawk Monte, a Coast Salish native of the Snoqualmie tribe, shares a searing poem reflecting on his twelve years spent in solitary confinement. Through vivid imagery and deeply personal narrative, Monte captures the psychological deterioration, spiritual disconnection, and loss of identity […]

by Voices from Solitary

April 17, 2025

Over the course of his incarceration, Redhawk Monte has spent 12 cumulative years in solitary confinement. A coastal Salish Native of the SDUKwALBIXw (Snoqualmie) tribe in western Washington, Monte says that his writing is both a coping mechanism and a platform to center the experiences and contributions of his fellow Indigenous people. When he’s not […]

by Francisco Rodriguez

April 16, 2025

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: President Trump announced via Truth Social that he has selected William “Billy” Marshall to lead the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Marshall, who was appointed as the commissioner of the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 2023, will inherit a severely overcrowded and […]

by Djamilah Diabate

April 9, 2025

New from Solitary Watch: In a two-part series, Solitary Watch reporting intern Sania Tildon examines the devastating psychological effects of solitary confinement through firsthand accounts. Part 1 explores how the conditions and lack of meaningful mental health care in solitary confinement often exacerbate preexisting mental health issues and create long-lasting psychological damage, especially among vulnerable populations.  […]

by Sania Tildon

April 4, 2025

Part 2 of a Series This two-part article was originally published on MindSite News. Part 1 examined a survey of solitary survivors about the mental health impact of isolation. Part 2 looks at elements of effective care and support for people who have experience solitary confinement. Every year, thousands of people who have spent significant amounts […]

by Sania Tildon

April 4, 2025

Part 1 of a Series This two-part article was originally published on MindSite News. Part 1 looks at the results of a survey of 21 people who were held for long periods in isolation.  “When you first get out you’re happy to be free, you enjoy inhaling air that’s not in a concrete bunker,” said […]

by Kilhah St Fort

April 2, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch: Prison writer and activist Jeremy Busby debunks the myths surrounding Texas’s “double-cell” solitary units, which house two people in a single cell for nearly 24 hours a day. Following the death of Alton Rodger, an incarcerated man, Busby details the inhumane conditions of these cells and how they contributed […]

by Jeremy Busby

March 31, 2025

This story is co-published with The Appeal. Alton Rodgers’s cellmate beat him repeatedly for a month before he died. On at least five occasions, Rodgers’s cellmate allegedly smashed Rodgers’s head against the concrete floor, walls, and other objects. According to the lawsuit that Rodgers’s family filed against the prison system, Rodgers, who was 6’3”, had […]

by Voices from Solitary

March 27, 2025

Joesph Patri Brown has been incarcerated on death row in Mississippi since 1992. During his 33 years in prison, Brown has experienced 31 years in solitary confinement, broken up by intervals in the general prison population. Brown is of Black and Natchez Indian descent and is the father of one daughter and grandfather of five […]

by Djamilah Diabate

March 26, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch: In our latest piece from the Ridgeway Reporting Project, Abraham Santiago, a former incarcerated caregiver and now an ICU clinical technician, shares a harrowing firsthand account of working in Connecticut’s prison medical unit during the COVID-19 pandemic. While incarcerated at MacDougall-Walker, Santiago provided care to gravely ill people at […]

by Abraham Santiago

March 20, 2025

The following article is the latest piece supported by Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project, written by Abraham Santiago, now an Intensive Care Unit clinical technician, author, and advocate. In this piece, Santiago, who spent 20 years incarcerated in Connecticut’s prison system, reports from his personal experience working in the prison’s medical unit, risking his life to […]

by Francisco Rodriguez

March 19, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch: In a new feature article, Solitary Watch’s Francisco Rodriguez looks at  The Strike, a new documentary film about the history and human toll of solitary confinement in California.  Rodriguez interviews filmmakers Lucas Guilkey and JoeBill Muñoz, as well as solitary survivors Jack Morris and Dolores Canales, about the timeline […]

by Francisco Rodriguez

March 13, 2025

For nearly thirty years, Jack Morris awoke every day in silence, isolated in his parking-space-sized cell, and began his routine: put on his shoes, comb water through his hair, brush his teeth, and clean the floor. As hours blended into days and weeks into months, the passing of time was only discernible by the arrival […]

by Djamilah Diabate

March 12, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch: In the most recent edition of Voices from Solitary, incarcerated journalist Sara Kielly brings readers with her as she travels back to her time at a men’s maximum security facility. Like more than 90 percent of transgender woman, Kielly spent long stints in solitary confinement before her transfer to […]

by Kwaneta Harris

March 11, 2025

In the shadowed corners of American prisons, where time stands still and humanity often crumbles, women have endured the cruel practice of solitary confinement for over two centuries. From suffragettes to political activists, from the mentally ill to the wrongfully accused, their stories echo through concrete walls, telling a tale of systemic oppression that persists […]

by Voices from Solitary

March 6, 2025

Sara Kielly is an investigative journalist, poet, and jailhouse lawyer currently incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York. Identifying as “an Irish-American transgender woman,” Kielly “works to change conditions of confinement for minority prisoners.” Her work has appeared in Slate, Spotlong Review, New York Amsterdam News, New York Focus, and Film Comment. She […]

by Kilhah St Fort

March 5, 2025

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: On Friday, February 28, New York Governor Kathy Hochul agreed to several concessions in hope of ending an illegal strike by state corrections officers. Central to the compromise is the “temporary” suspension of several provisions of the HALT Solitary Confinement law. The City | There […]

by Djamilah Diabate

February 26, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  In celebration of Black History Month, Solitary Watch Editor-in-Chief Juan Moreno Haines reflects on his lived experiences as Black men incarcerated at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. Haines’ reflection is complemented by the words of Jason “Knowledge Supreme Mind” Jackson, an incarcerated poet and spoken-word artist also incarcerated at San […]

by Juan Moreno Haines and Knowledge Supreme Mind Jackson

February 25, 2025

Black History Month By Juan Moreno Haines I, on the brink of 30 years of incarceration, am relying on my 67 years of lived experience to reflect on Black History Month. In addition, I asked poet and spoken word artist, Jason “Knowledge Supreme Mind” Jackson to join me by writing and recording something evocative. He […]

by Voices from Solitary

February 21, 2025

Now entering her second year in solitary confinement, Lanae Tipton has spent nearly five years incarcerated in Texas. Tipton describes herself as a proud mother of one and an aspiring author, and says that her writing strives to voice the struggles and barriers incarcerated people are faced with, providing readers with an inside look of […]

by Francisco Rodriguez

February 19, 2025

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: The New York City Board of Correction (BOC), the city’s jail oversight body, condemned the Department of Correction for secretly constructing a new high-security unit on Rikers Island that may violate Local Law 42, which mandates incarcerated individuals spend 14 hours outside of their cells […]

by Djamilah Diabate

February 12, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch: Solitary Watch recently published the fact sheet “Solitary Confinement in Immigration Detention,” the ninth in a series of short publications that offer facts, analysis, and resources on a variety of topics related to solitary confinement in the United States. This fact sheet, written by Francisco Rodriguez, states: “Solitary confinement […]

by Jean Casella

February 6, 2025

Today, Solitary Watch is publishing the ninth in a series of fact sheets that offer 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 Francisco Rodriguez, is titled “Solitary Confinement in Immigrant Detention.” As the fact sheet […]

by Kilhah St Fort

February 5, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch: Having spent more than eight years in solitary confinement, Solitary Watch Contributing Writer Kwaneta Harris was finally moved into “medium custody” in her Texas women’s prison. However, she soon discovered the practice of “23:59” lockdowns—a bureaucratic loophole that allows Texas prison officials to place individuals in solitary confinement for twenty-three […]

by Kwaneta Harris

February 4, 2025

When they promoted me to medium custody after more than eight years in isolation, I thought I was leaving solitary confinement behind. Instead, I found myself in a strange space: not quite solitary, not quite general population, but somehow managing to combine the worst aspects of both. On paper, in Texas, medium custody is supposed […]