As Americans prepare to celebrate Independence Day, inmates in solitary confinement at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison are standing up for their rights in the only way they can–by going on a hunger strike. The prisoners, who are being held in long-term and often permanent isolation, have sworn to refuse food until conditions are improved in Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit […]
Month: June 2011
Voices from Solitary: On Solitary Confinement and Finding Humanity
Susan Crane is part of Plowshares movement, which protests nuclear weapons through nonviolent civil disobedience at military bases and other nuclear facilities. She is a member of the “Disarm Now Plowshares Five,” who were arrested in November 2009 after they clandestinely entered the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base outside Seattle, the largest nuclear weapons storage facility in […]
Confronting Torture in U.S. Prisons: A Q&A With Solitary Watch
The following interview with James Ridgeway and Jean Casella, conducted by Angola 3 News, appeared earlier this week on Alternet (where you can read the introduction, which includes background on the upcoming prisoner hunger strike at Pelican Bay.) Angola 3 News: How did you first become interested in the issue of solitary confinement and ultimately become inspired to start […]
Solitary Confinement Widely Used in California's Juvenile Jails
CHILDREN IN LOCKDOWN Based on findings by the state’s own court-appointed overseers, California Watch reports that “Juvenile inmates at California correctional facilities have been held in isolation nearly 24 hours straight on hundreds of occasions this year, in violation of state regulations.” An audit by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in March found multiple facilities […]
Voices from Solitary: The Meaning of "Life"
Joseph Dole is currently serving a life sentence without parole at Tamms state supermax prison in Illinois. For the past eight years, he has been in solitary confinement (under conditions described by Dole himself here, and detailed in recent newspaper exposés here and here). His writing has been honored by the PEN American Center’s Prison Writing Contest and appears […]
Doctors Prescribe Cure for "Epidemic of Mass Incarceration"
Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to significantly reduce the number of inmates in its state prisons, where conditions are so horrendous that the violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In an article just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, physician researchers from the Center for Prisoner […]
Upcoming Forum in New York on Solitary Confinement in State Prisons
The Metro New York Religious Campaign Against Torture will be hosting a public event on the use of solitary confnement and other forms of torture and abuse within the New York State Prison System. With close to 8 percent of its prison population in some form of segregation, New York far exceeds the national average for solitary […]
From BOP to CCA: Federal Prison Director Defects to Private Prison Company
Less than a month after retiring from his post as Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Harley G. Lappin has been hired to a top positon at the nation’s largest private, for-profit prison contractor, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). In a move that has gone virtually unnoticed by the press except on the business pages, Lappin, who had […]
Amnesty International Calls for Angola 3's Release from 40 Years of Solitary Confinement
Amnesty International has issued a press release, action alert, and detailed report on the case of the Angola 3, which has been extensively documented in Mother Jones (here, here, and here). The press release, issued yesterday, concerns the two members of the Angola 3 who remain in prison and have now entered their 40th year in […]
Mentally Ill Inmate Starves to Death in Utah Jail
The Salt Lake City Tribune reports that a young prisoner who apparently suffered from serious mental illness died of starvation and dehydration after spending four months in the Salt Lake County Jail, much of them in solitary confinement. Carlos Umana, 20, weighed at 180 pounds when he entered the jail in October 2010; when he died […]
Solitary Watch Fact Sheet: Psychological Effects of Solitary Confinement
Now available is the first of a series of fact sheets on various aspects of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. The two-page fact sheet is available as a PDF at the following link: FACT SHEET — Psychological Effects of Solitary Confinement This fact sheet, which references research on how solitary confinement affects the mental health […]
Maine Cuts Supermax Population, Reforms Solitary Confinement Practices
As Lance Tapley reported last week, recent developments in Maine demonstrate the difference that reform-minded leadership can make to prison conditions, including the use and abuse of solitary confinement. Even as it has grown exponentially over recent decades, the use of solitary has generally been treated not as a human rights issue but as a matter of correctional […]