As the year ends, we are republishing the following essay by Joseph Stanwick, who spent nearly two decades in solitary confinement in Texas prisons. “I’ve seen men cut on themselves with razor blades, go on hunger strikes for the most absurd reasons, beat on the walls and doors,” he wrote of his experiences there, “because solitary […]
• The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Allegheny County in Pennsylvania for placing pregnant women in solitary confinement, a practice that is said to put both the mother and her child at risk. According to the lawsuit, some women have been placed in isolation in the Pittsburgh jail for relatively minor rule violations, like […]
This post has become a Christmas tradition at Solitary Watch. To all our readers, warm wishes for the holidays. Special thanks to those who have helped (or plan to help) us bring a small ray of light into the darkness of solitary confinement by supporting our Lifelines to Solitary project. –Jean and Jim = = = = […]
Marshall Justice Rountree served 23 years in New Jersey’s prisons. He spent several of his years behind bars helping other incarcerated men as a prison paralegal, and built relationships with advocacy networks and organizations. Rountree believes these activities led to him being targeted and placed in solitary confinement. Immediately upon his release in June of this year, Rountree […]
• Filmmaker James Burns voluntarily entered solitary confinement in the La Paz County Jail in Parker, Arizona. Every moment of his 30 days in the hole will be livestreamed here. • New York City’s Correction Officers’ Union announced it would be suing the city to block a new policy that would prohibit people from being […]
Every year, hundreds of human beings in solitary confinement reach out to Solitary Watch through the old-fashioned practice of letter-writing. A while back, I wrote this piece about what it is like to correspond with people who live in solitary confinement. (It has since helped inspire coverage of our work by The New Yorker, WNYC’s “The Takeaway,” and Al Jazeera’s […]
• Federal appellate judges decided a lawsuit can proceed against officials at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, after correctional officers allegedly forced a prisoner to live in a solitary confinement cell flooded with raw sewage. Raul Arellano filed the lawsuit in October 2014, claiming that what occurred violated his Eighth Amendment […]
• The Vera Institute released a new report about the use of solitary confinement in Oregon. Key findings from the report included: that “disciplinary segregation is overused, overly long, and characterized by isolating conditions,” that “stays in administrative segregation can be long, isolating and unproductive,” and that “people of color and people with mental health […]