On Monday, February 25th, the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, chaired by Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, held a hearing on the state’s Security Housing Units (SHUs). The hearing comes 18 months after the committee held a similar hearing prompted by a three-week long hunger strike in June 2011 that involved thousands of California prisoners across […]
On Friday, February 22nd, the Montana House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on House Bill 536, entitled the “Montana Solitary Confinement Act,” sponsored by legislator Franke Wilmer. The bill, which the National Religious Campaign Against Torture calls a “critical opportunity to lead the way nationally in increasing access to rehabilitation and reducing harm,” would place […]
In 1993, Dr. Stuart Grassian, following extensive interviews with men in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit (SHU), reported that extensive periods in solitary confinement lead to what he referred to as a “syndrome” particular to prison isolation units. Anxiety, ruminations, panic attacks, aggression, paranoia, and psychotic symptoms were observed as a consequence of […]
As of today, alleged Wikileaker Bradley Manning has been held without trial for 1,000 days. More than nine months of that time was spent in solitary confinement in the Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. To mark the date, we recommend reading Chase Madar’s book The Passion of Bradley Manning–or, next best, the long excerpt from the […]
On January 4, 2013, Tamms Supermax in southern Illinois officially closed its doors. The prison, where some men had been in solitary confinement for more than a decade, had become notorious for its brutal treatment of prisoners with mental illness–and for driving sane prisoners to madness and suicide. The closure of Tamms, under order of […]
The following essay comes from Sara Rodrigues, formerly imprisoned at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison for women in Westchester, New York, and now further upstate at Albion. When Sara was sent to prison at the age of 16, she found her friend D there as well. Both Sara and D had life-long struggles with mental health, and […]
The following was submitted to Solitary Watch by Michael Jewell, who was sentenced to death in Texas for capital murder in 1970 and spent three years in solitary confinement as a death row prisoner. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1973 following the 1972 Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia, which prohibited […]
Prisoners at Utah State Prison, Draper’s supermax Uinta One facility have reported numerous abuses to Solitary Watch. The Uinta One facility has a design capacity of 96, and is divided into eight sections with twelve cells each, with approximately 90 prisoners currently held in solitary confinement for reasons varying from short-term disciplinary action to protective […]
The following commentary is by Enceno Macy, the pen name of a young man who is serving a 15-year sentence in a West Coast prison. From the ages of 13 to 17, he experienced solitary confinement as a juvenile in three different settings: juvenile detention, jail, and state prison. Solitary Watch encouraged him to write about […]
The title of this post is the title of an article by us that appears in the current edition of Fortune News, the publication of the Fortune Society, a remarkable group based in the New York City. The organization describes itself as follows: “The Fortune Society’s mission is to support successful reentry from prison and […]
Even as it announces a review and reduction of its solitary confinement practices, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed to Solitary Watch that a newly acquired prison ln Illinois will hold federal prisoners in supermax conditions. “Thomson will be a high security prison holding inmates with various security needs, including SMU and ADX type inmates,” said BOP spokesperson Chris Burke […]
A comprehensive new article on the treatment of prisoners with mental illness in the New York City jail system appears on The New York World, a site run by the Columbia Journalism School. The piece, by Maura R. O’Connor, opens with the story of Jason Echeverria, a pre-trial detainee who was being held in a special solitary […]