We don’t want to overlook a powerful article called “Solitary Men” that appeared in the Texas Observer earlier this month. The author, Dave Mann, spent time talking with inmates on Texas’s death row, who are housed in a “prison within a prison” at the Allan B. Polunksy Unit near Livingston in southeast Texas. The unit which holds more […]
The inmate at Massachusetts’ Norfolk Prison who blew the whistle on a sex-for-information ring operated by guards (as reported here last week) has been placed in the hole. Timothy Muise, an activist with the Lifers Group inside the prison, said in a letter that he had been visited by Assistant Deputy Commissioner Paul DiPaolo, the state official in […]
Guest Post by Stuart Grassian, M.D. Editors’ Note: The Colorado Department of Corrections recently released the controversial results of a year-long, federally funded study conducted at the Colorado State Penitentiary, a supermax prison in Cañon City where more than 700 men are held in solitary confinement. Entitled “One Year Longitudinal Study of the Psychological Effects of Administrative Segregation,” […]
When we visited Colorado recently, prisoner advocates were awaiting the results of a year-long, federally funded study on how solitary confinement affects mental health. The study was conducted in the Colorado State Penitentiary, a supermax prison where all 700+ inmates live in long-term isolation. CSP, which is located outside prison-laden Cañon City, was the subject of a recent National Geographic documentary […]
On TomDispatch today, lawyer and journalist Chase Madar argues that Guantánamo is “not quite as exceptional as either those who love it or loathe it might may think.” He reviews the case of Omar Khadr, who was 15 years old when he was captured after a firefight in Afghanistan, then tortured and placed at Gitmo, where he remained […]
There will be no charges brought against prison officials in the suspicious death last year of an inmate in solitary confinement at Maine State Prison’s supermax unit, the state Attorney General’s office announced last week. We are reprinting here the better part of an article on the subject from the Portland Phoenix by Lance Tapley, who […]
Back in May, we wrote about the case of a woman prisoner named Michelle Ortiz, who was first chastised and then shackled and sent to solitary confinement as punishment for reporting her molestation and subsequent rape by a male guard. As the Columbus Dispatch reported: When Ortiz reported the first assault to prison official Paula […]
A prisoner at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Norfolk has written to Solitary Watch to report the existence of a “sex for information’’ ring run by guards within the prison. He says the existence of this hitherto unknown operation is responsible for the state’s high number of prison suicides. The inmate suicide rate in Massachusetts is four times the national […]
Solitary Watch is a participating organization in Amnesty International’s Torture Awareness Campaign, sponsored by John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. The campaign has been putting on a month-long series of programs–you can click on the link provided here to get the full listing. James Ridgeway will be part of a panel this Thursday on […]