Cañon City, Colorado, is the Solitary Confinement Capital of the Western World. Now, a Small Group Lawyers, Legislators, and Activists Is Challenging This All-American Form of Torture. Part 1: The Alcatraz of the Rockies On the wall opposite Laura Rovner’s desk at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law is a large framed drawing […]
Susan Rosenberg was 29 in 1984 when she was arrested while trying to unload dynamite and guns from a U-Haul in New Jersey. When she was identified, it turned out she was wanted in connection with a revolutionary group’s attempt to rob a Brinks armored truck, in which a guard and two police officers were killed. There never were any charges […]
Over the last two weeks, the ACLU has adopted a much more vigorous stance against solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. It has launched a listserv to bring together lawyers, activists, scholars, journalists, and others interested in the subject, and asked the UN Human Rights Council to look into solitary’s torturous effects on prisoners in the United States. […]
A bill just introduced in the Colorado state legislature would place curbs on the use of solitary confinement in state prisons, especially on prisoners with mental illness. As we’ve written before, Colorado makes liberal use of solitary confinement. The practice has spurred public debate over the opening of an second costly supermax prison in the midst of a budget crisis, […]
The American Civil Liberties Union last week filed a statement with the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, urging it to to “address the widespread violations of the human rights of prisoners in the United States associated with solitary confinement and call for the adoption of appropriate measures to protect their human rights. The ACLU calls on […]
On Truthout, Jason Leopold interviews David Hicks, an Australian national who spent six years at Guantanamo Bay before being charged with “providing material support to terrorists” and convicted in a military tribunal. Now free and living in Australia, Hicks alleges that he faced torture that included beatings, shackling, forced sedation, and sleep deprivation, as well as 24-hour […]
In relation to solitary confinement, one of the most important recent court rulings came in 1995’s Madrid v. Gomez. The decision was the result of a massive class-action suit, brought two years earlier in Federal District Court in California by the nonprofit Prison Law Office on behalf of more than 3,500 prisoners at Pelican Bay supermax. Prison Law Office Director […]
The saga of Timothy Muise, the Massachusetts prisoner who was punished after he exposed an alleged sex-for-snitching ring inside MCI Norfolk, has taken yet another turn for the worse. Once he made his accusations known, Muise was thrown into solitary confinement. He was brought up on disciplinary charges and given additional time in solitary. Last week, Muise was […]
Solitary Watch now hosts two new collections of resources on solitary confinement: > Law Review Articles > Journal Articles These resources, like the court cases published recently, are made possible by the work of Solitary Watch Research Associates Daniel H. Goldman and Ryan Brimmer, students at the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse, Washington & Lee University School […]
The Smart on Crime Coalition is a gathering of organizations from across the political spectrum–from the ACLU to the Heritage Foundation–which issues policy recommendations for criminal justice reform at the federal level. “Due to the undeniable human costs and the overwhelming fiscal costs,” its website states, “Americans from diverse political perspectives–particularly professionals with experience in all […]
“In keeping with established practice, FDA does not review or approve products for the purpose of lethal injection. FDA has not reviewed the products in this shipment to determine their identity, safety, effectiveness, purity, or any other characteristics.” This is the statement now imprinted on shipments of lethal injection drugs that are brought into the country from foreign sources. Now, a […]
In another example of solitary confinement as a tool of retaliation in the prison system, a Colorado inmate claims that he was put in solitary for nearly a year because he refused to provide false testimony in a capital prison murder case. He is now suing prison officials in federal court. This story comes from Alan Prendergast, who reports […]