UPDATE, October 30, 12 noon: Solitary Watch has received the following statement via email from NYC DOC Deputy Commissioner Matthew Nerzig: “No power outages on Rikers last night. No significant flooding or disruption of our operations. The Commissioner [DOC Commissioner Dora Schriro] spent the night there.” Solitary Watch would also appreciate hearing from families whose loved […]
A federal judge this week decried the effects of solitary confinement on a prisoner convicted on terrorism-related charges, who has spent 12 years inside ADX Florence supermax. The same judge then proceeded to sentence the prisoner in question to 37 more years, which will most likely be spent in the same torturous conditions. But these […]
“I write, read, cry, sleep and beg for death.” That is how fifty-six-year-old inmate J.,  in Utah State Prison, Draper’s Uinta 1 facility describes life in Utah’s isolation units, which houses the state’s death row prisoners in addition to inmates placed there for disciplinary issues. J. has spent six years in Uinta 1, a place […]
Utah State Prison’s Uinta 1 facility serves as the prison’s super-maximum security unit, where inmates are held in solitary confinement. Inmates in Uinta 1 may be there for disciplinary infractions, notoriety reasons, protective custody, or because they are security/escape risks. The unit is divided into eight sections with twelve inmates in each section, for a total […]
The following comes from a prisoner held at the French Robertson Unit in Abilene, Texas. Robertson Unit is a maximum security facility that houses over 2,900 inmates. The prison houses a large number of inmates in Administrative Segregation–long-term solitary confinement units. Similarly to California and other states, Texas segregates prisoners designated as members of certain gangs […]
Solitary Watch has recently confirmed that on August 28th,  prisoner Armando Morales (CDCR number-P80673) committed suicide by hanging in his cell at California State Prison, Corcoran. The Kings County Coroner’s office confirmed that Mr. Morales was found unresponsive at 4:41 PM in his cell by prison staff. He was found on his cell floor with a […]
Not to be missed is Shane Bauer’s article in the November/December issue of Mother Jones, now available online. Bauer was one of the three American hikers arrested on the Iran/Iraq border and held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison for 26 months. In his article “No Way Out,” which is both highly personal and factually detailed, he compares […]
On October 10th, prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison and California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi launched a hunger strike. The hunger strike, which has in total involved five hundred prisoners, coincided with the date of an announced racial cease-fire issued by prisoners in Pelican Bay referred to as the PBSP-SHU Short Corridor Collective. The group, which consists […]
The title of this post is the title of our most recent piece for The Guardian. It draws on a new report released yesterday by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, titled Growing Up Locked Down: Youth in Solitary Confinement in Jails and Prisons Across the United States. The report is a shocking […]
Guest Post by Laura Rovner Last week, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights rejected appeals from five terror suspects challenging their extraditions from Britain to the United States. The unanimous decision from the judges affirmed the Court’s earlier ruling that “detention conditions and length of sentences of five alleged terrorists would […]
An important new report on solitary confinement was released today by the New York Civil Liberties Union, titled Boxed In: The True Cost of Extreme Isolation in New York’s Prisons. Based on a year of research, correspondence with more than a hundred prisoners, and multiple open records requests, this report offers a detailed and powerful picture of how solitary confinement […]