People in Solitary in Texas Are Banned from Reading the Book They Wrote…and Other News on Solitary Confinement This Week

Seven Days in Solitary for the Week Ending 10/16/24

by | October 16, 2024

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has some of the most extensive restrictions on the types of texts available to incarcerated people. Beyond their bans on nearly 10,000 books, the TDCJ recently refused to allow Lupe Constante access to a copy of his own work. Constante was among several incarcerated writers in solitary confinement whose work was featured in the most recent print edition of the Texas Letters Project. “To see TDCJ ban my words, it’s like they were saying my sources of hope and my lived experiences should be destroyed,” said Dillion Compton, another incarcerated writer featured in the book.  The Guardian 

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Following the shuttering of the federal prison FCI Dublin in April due to rampant sexual misconduct by staff, approximately 90% of the women incarcerated at the facility were transferred to FCI Waseca. However, Waseca also faces extreme challenges related to substance abuse, and the women are frequently placed on lockdown or in solitary confinement in the Security Housing Unit. “They cannot even call their young children to tell them they’ve been put in the SHU. So, their kids just think they’ve disappeared,” said Attorney Kara Janssen following her visit to FCI Waseca. KTVU 

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For more than a decade, Clara Pinson has been taking the federal Bureau of Prisons to court over its failure to ensure her safety as an incarcerated transgender woman. After being repeatedly denied access to gender-affirming care and assaulted while housed in men’s prisons, she was transferred to solitary confinement in the supermax ADX Florence, instead of the court-advised mental health facility. In 2018 she was transferred to FCI Tucson, where she was housed in solitary confinement with a cellmate, which resulted in an egregious assault and her most recent case against the BOP. The Marshall Project 

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Jared Villery, like many other incarcerated people across the country, was required to perform unpaid labor throughout his time in the California prison system. Despite having a medical diagnosis that placed restrictions on what kind of work he could do, Villery was continually assigned jobs that he was physically incapable of or struggled to perform. In the instances he could not complete the assigned jobs, he was punished with solitary confinement and other disciplinary restrictions that threatened his parole eligibility. If passed in November, the recently introduced ballot measure Proposition 6 would amend California’s state constitution to ban prisons from using unpaid labor and punishing incarcerated people for reusing a work assignment.  Bolts Magazine

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