“The Army private charged with leaking an airstrike video and downloading documents remained in solitary confinement Saturday,” according to CNN. “Military officials told CNN that Pfc. Bradley Manning is also the prime suspect in the latest leak of documents to the WikiLeaks website.” The 22-year old military intelligence analyst was arrested in Iraq in May […]
Month: July 2010
No Legal Defense for the Poor
Even among advocates of criminal justice reform, most (ourselves included) tend to focus on the draconian punishments that await the convicted–when in practice, it is the trial process that finishes off the accused, who is sold down the river after going through a mockery of justice. The crisis in defense of the indigent informs much of the […]
Prison Heat: Hunger Strike Highlights Summer's Deadly Toll on U.S. Inmates
As heatwaves swept the Northeast earlier this month, 30 inmates in solitary confinement at New Hampshire State Prison went on hunger strike to protest stifling temperatures inside the prison’s Special Housing Unit. According to the Concord Monitor, “Inmates in SHU cannot open windows and must remain in their cells, usually alone, for 23 hours a day. Unlike inmates in […]
Montana Teen Who Faced Torture in Prison Asks Judge to Keep Him Out of Solitary
CHILDREN IN LOCKDOWN One of the first posts we wrote on Solitary Watch, when we started the site back in December, was the story of a teen suffering from depression and PTSD who was living in solitary confinement at Montana State Prison, in conditions that the American Civil Liberties Union did not hesitate to identify as torture. […]
Judge Rules Procedures at Tamms Supermax Violate Constitution
A federal judge yesterday ruled that current procedures for sending prisoners to the Tamms Correctional Center in southern Illinois–and keeping them there indefinitely–is in violation of the 14th Amendment to U.S. Constitution, which guarantees due process of law. The judge ordered that significant changes be made at the notorious state supermax. George Pawlaczyk, whose award-winning coverage last year exposed […]
The Puppy Protection Act and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act
Today we’re cross-posting an entry from my blog Unsilent Generation, because of its relevance to an issue we’ve written about before: environmental and animal rights activists placed in federal supermax Communications Management Units (CMUs) under the vastly overreactive Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA). The gist of this is that if you pursue some modest reforms through […]
"Torture Memo" Author Says He Authorized Waterboarding, But Not "Extended Solitary Confinement"
According to Congressional testimony released yesterday, the former official in Bush’s Justice Department who co-authored the most famous of the “torture memos,” said he had sanctioned certain harsh “interrogation techniques” used by the CIA on terrorism suspects, but not others. As the Los Angeles Times reported, “Jay S. Bybee, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, said in […]
A Supermax Prisoner's Film from Hell
Last night HBO ran a documentary shot by an inmate living in solitary confinement at New Jersey’s Northern State Prison in Newark. The prisoner, Omar Broadway, a member of the Bloods gang, had served 7 years in solitary on various felony charges in the prison’s Security Threat Group Management Unit. Sympathetic guards smuggled a camera into his cell, […]
Clarence Thomas "Outraged" by Treatment of His Nephew, But Condones the Same for Thousands of Others
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was reportedly “completely shocked and outraged” when he learned that his nephew, who suffers from epilepsy and was reportedly suicidal, was beaten and tased with a stun gun at a Louisiana hospital–apparently, for nothing more than some unruly behavior. “Outraged” we can understand: What happened to 24-year-old Derek Thomas does qualify as outrageous. […]
LGBT Kids in Prison Face Rape, Beatings, and Isolation
CHILDREN IN LOCKDOWN “Across the United States, the brutal and dysfunctional juvenile justice system sends queer youth to prison in disproportionate numbers, fails to protect them from violence and discrimination while they’re inside and to this day condones attempts to turn them straight,” writes Daniel Redman in a powerful article on LGBT youth behind bars, which appeared […]
Celebrities in Solitary: Lindsay Lohan Goes to Lockdown
Get ready. We are likely to hear more from the press about solitary confinement in the next month than we have in the last year. That’s because when Lindsay Lohan surrenders herself for her 90-day prison term, she reportedly will be housed in isolation in Lynwood, California’s Century Regional Detention Facility (CRDF). “Gawker” says that Lohan “will be kept […]
Russian "Spy" Anna Chapman Chose Deportation Over Solitary Confinement
According to her lawyer, accused Russian agent Anna Chapman chose to plead guilty and accept deportation, rather than fight the charges against her, in part to avoid what she feared would be a lengthy stay in pre-trial solitary confinement. Chapman, who became the unwitting “star” of the Russian spy drama due to her glamorous looks […]