In 2008, the federal Bureau of Prisons passed a policy prohibiting the use of restraints on women in custody who are in labor, delivery or postpartum recovery. In 2009, Texas passed a law banning the use of shackles on incarcerated pregnant women during labor, delivery and postpartum recovery. But, as both the ACLU of Texas and […]
This month, advocates and people behind bars received statistical proof for something they have long suspected—that gay, lesbian and transgender individuals in prison are placed in solitary confinement at significantly greater rates than their heterosexual and cisgender peers. On October 16, the organization Black & Pink released a groundbreaking report, “Coming Out of Concrete Closets,” which examines […]
• The Hartford Courant examined the significant decrease in the use of solitary confinement at the Connecticut’s maximum-security prison, Northern Correctional Institution – from 244 people held in isolation in 2003 to 53 held in isolation in mid-October 2015. Hope Metcalf of Yale Law School said, “From a numbers perspective, Connecticut is doing much better than […]
GUEST POST BY CORRINA REGNIER AND VERBENA LEA At this moment, 80,000 to 100,000 people in the United States spend all but one or two hours a day locked in tiny, often windowless cells – sometimes in complete darkness, sometimes in ceaseless artificial light. There they stay, for months, years, and even decades, with […]
What is a prison system to do with what are sometimes called the “worst of the worst” among its charges? How can prisons handle individuals who have been so violent that they cannot be housed in the general population? For decades, in the United States, the answer has been to place them, along with tens […]
As the first of several journeys for Solitary Watch’s Alternatives Project, my colleague Aviva Stahl and I spent two weeks in Britain, visiting prisons and interviewing officials of HM Prison Service and its oversight bodies, advocates, lawyers, scholars, and currently and formerly incarcerated individuals. Our aim was to discover how solitary is—and is not—used in […]
The following roundup features noteworthy news, reports and opinions on solitary confinement from the past week that have not been covered in other Solitary Watch posts. • Taylor Pendergrass of the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote a commentary piece for the Marshall Project linking the movement to reform solitary confinement to the broader struggle to […]
This week we debut a new feature on Solitary Watch: a timeline that tracks the rapidly accumulating (and accelerating) reforms made to solitary confinement policies and practices across the country. “Milestones in Solitary Reform” – created and maintained by Amy Fettig of the ACLU National Prison Project, and Margo Schlanger of the University of Michigan Law School, with […]
The following roundup features noteworthy news, reports and opinions on solitary confinement from the past week that have not been covered in other Solitary Watch posts. • Two prominent voices in the movement to reform solitary published an article for The American Prospect entitled, “Eight Principles for Reforming Solitary Confinement.” Some of the principles listed include […]
Jacob Barrett is an Oregon state prisoner who was transferred to Florida under the Interstate Corrections Compact. He was held in the Intensive Management Unit in Oregon, and then in Close Management in Florida—both euphemism for solitary confinement. Barrett has served two decades of a life sentence for a murder committed when he was 19 years […]
The following roundup features noteworthy news, reports and opinions on solitary confinement from the past week that have not been covered in other Solitary Watch posts. • The Advocate published an interview with Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman recently released from Augusta State Medical Prison in Georgia. “It was torture. I might be free now, but […]
More than 100 organizations from across the United States sent an open letter to President Obama Friday calling for the elimination of long-term and indefinite solitary confinement. The signatories – including civil and human rights groups, religious organizations, and groups of defense attorneys and mental health professionals – ask the President to take quick and […]