• Corrections departments across the country have found ways to circumvent recent anti-solitary confinement legislation by simply renaming the cages that people are held in, the Progressive reports. Unlock the Box director Jessica Sandoval described how it was common for facilities to trade new names in for “solitary confinement,” like “special management unit” or “special housing […]
Troy Hendrix, 38, is serving a life sentence at Attica Correctional Facility in New York State. Originally sentenced at 19 years old, he has spent the last 15 and a half years in solitary confinement. In the letter he wrote accompanying this piece, Hendrix reminisced about how Solitary Watch’s late founder and co-director, James Ridgeway, […]
• A group of more than 20 men at David Wade Correctional Center in Louisiana went on a hunger strike last week to call attention to the torture-like conditions they are experiencing. They are part of a program in which incarcerated people from another prison—Elayn Hunt—are sent to David Wade for intensive disciplinary segregation. The […]
• A hunger strike by more than 20 incarcerated men in Pennsylvania prisons over prolonged solitary confinement came to an end after ten days on July 6, reports the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. The strikers are held in the Intensive Management Unit (IMU) at State Correctional Institution-Phoenix, which they allege is de facto solitary confinement. They declared […]
This article is published in partnership with New York Focus. William “Billy” Blake, whose 2013 essay “A Sentence Worse Than Death” introduced hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide to the soul-crushing reality of life in long-term solitary confinement, has been transferred to the general prison population in New York. In a brief phone call, Blake […]
Ethan Macks, 30, originally of Flagstaff, Arizona, began serving a seven-year sentence in the Arizona State Prison Complex at Yuma in 2018. He was recently released from a ten-month term in a maximum-security solitary confinement unit. In this piece, Mack describes a setup colloquially known as “double doors,” which in the name of “security” adds […]
• A survey conducted by the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland found that “five in six voters favor sharply restricting the use of solitary confinement.” The survey found that the majority of American voters support reforms that would limit the use of solitary, including 84% of Republican and 90% of Democrat […]