The following was written by Hector Matos, who is incarcerated in the New York State prison system on manslaughter and attempted assault convictions, and has spent long stretches of time in solitary confinement on various disciplinary charges. As he describes in his piece, he believes many of these charges are the result of his hearing […]
• Seth Ferranti, who reported on prison conditions while he was incarcerated in Bureau of Prisons custody, penned a piece for the Huffington Post about the time he was thrown in solitary, then transferred to a Communication Management Unit (CMU) for writing articles critical of the BOP. People locked up in the BOP’s two CMUs […]
• A demonstration against solitary confinement was held outside the home of Michigan Department of Corrections Director Heidi Washington. According to one local outlet, “the demonstration follows the suicide (still under investigation) of a young man on May 2nd at Oaks Correctional Facility in Manistee, where most of the 70 have been incarcerated.” • Joaquin […]
Guest Post by Lucius Couloute The following post comes from the always invaluable Prison Policy Initiative, which documents and publicizes how mass incarceration punishes our entire society, through groundbreaking research, innovative media work, and intersectional organizing. Author Lucius Couloute is PPI’s Policy & Communications Associate Visit them at www.prisonpolicy.org. = = = = = = = = = = = = […]
• The Federal Bureau of Prisons has systematically violated the Eighth Amendment rights of people with mental health issues locked up at Lewisburg prison in Pennsylvania, according to a lawsuit filed by the DC Prisoners’ Project of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. “The isolation of prisoners with mental illness and […]
• The Crime Report examined the issue of solitary confinement on death row, specifically in Texas. Anthony Graves, who spent sixteen years in isolation on death row before his conviction was overturned, said “Men are literally going insane and attempting suicide because of the way we’re allowing the state to house death row inmates.” • […]
About a year after our founding in 2009, when we realized that the shoestring project called Solitary Watch was something that desperately needed to be maintained and expanded over the long term, we also acknowledged a disconcerting truth: Our most important potential readership was also the one group of people who could not access our […]