New Report Shows How Prison Discipline “Manufactures Misconduct”…and Other News on Solitary Confinement This Week 

Seven Days in Solitary for the Week Ending 2/5/25

by | February 5, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:

Having spent more than eight years in solitary confinement, Solitary Watch Contributing Writer Kwaneta Harris was finally moved into “medium custody” in her Texas women’s prison. However, she soon discovered the practice of “23:59” lockdowns—a bureaucratic loophole that allows Texas prison officials to place individuals in solitary confinement for twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes a day. “At least solitary didn’t dress up torture in a promotion or play games with minutes and regulations,” she writes. “This ‘medium custody’ feels like gaslighting, telling us we’re more free while finding new ways to emulate solitary.” Solitary Watch

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

In its recent report Bad Behavior: How Prison Disciplinary Policies Manufacture Misconduct, Prison Policy Initiative reveals that “unfair and unaccountable” prison disciplinary systems “are counterproductive, traumatizing, and lengthen prison stays.” By analyzing policies in all 50 state prison systems and surveying dozens of incarcerated people, PPI found that issues of prisoner safety are often ignored and discipline is inconsistent, lacking transparency, and heavily driven by the egos of staff. Nine out of ten people in prison who reported being written up for a violation in the survey also reported receiving some form of disciplinary action, such as solitary confinement, forced labor, and lost access to programming and services. In addition to forcing people into compliance, experiencing solitary confinement can increase the chances of being rearrested. Prison Policy Initiative

As her proposed bill moves through Virginia’s legislature, Delegate Holly Seibold (D) joined advocates at a rally in protest of allegations of prolonged use of solitary confinement and mistreatment of incarcerated people at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge state prisons. Targeting prison temperature regulation, House Bill 1894 would require prisons to provide residents with individual fans or insulating materials when cell temperatures rise above 80 degrees or fall below 65 degrees. Daily News Record

Activist Talib Akbar, who served time at Waupun Correctional Institution, unveils an exhibit that illustrates conditions of solitary confinement in Wisconsin prisons. Transforming a 30-year-old box truck, Akbar created a mobile replica of the cell he spent three and a half years of his seventeen-year sentence. The exhibit includes features like a 24/7 surveillance camera and a red door, elements designed to convey the reality of being in solitary confinement. PBS Wisconsin 

Kevin Light-Roth, an incarcerated writer supported by Empowerment Avenue, explores the severe and lasting psychological effects of solitary confinement. In the first few months of his time “in the hole,” he struggled to distinguish dreams from reality. Eventually, he “adjusted” to his conditions by slipping into a dissociative state and losing the desire to leave solitary confinement. The experience continued to haunt him after he returned to general population: “The version of you that might have come to be without solitary confinement—without disadvantage, without all the destructive decisions and cruel luck and tragedies you wish you could undo—is not something that can be reclaimed. You will come to accept, after extensive struggle, that to mourn its loss is to mourn nothing at all. But from time to time, you will mourn it anyway.” The Small Bow

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