For Immediate Release: April 30, 2026
Contact: Valerie Kiebala,  valerie@solitarywatch.org, (202) 582-9695

WASHINGTON, DC—Solitary Watch today announced the recipients of grants awarded by the Ridgeway Reporting Project for Incarcerated Journalists. 

The grants program, which is funded by the Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation and the Vital Projects Fund, will support seven projects that expose prison policies and practices from the inside out, exploring their impact on incarcerated people, the criminal legal system, and the larger society that permits and pays for them.

The journalists, who have experienced firsthand the realities of solitary confinement, will report on various untold aspects of solitary, including the realities of implementing reforms limiting solitary confinement, the stifling isolation of death row and its effects on human beings, the question of why Americans seem to care more about a gorilla in captivity than humans in torture chambers, and more.

The seven projects were chosen from more than 30 submissions by incarcerated journalist and Solitary Watch editor-in-chief Juan Moreno Haines, in collaboration with Solitary Watch’s Jean Casella, Kwaneta Harris, Katie Rose Quandt, and Valerie Kiebala.

Haines, who is himself the recipient of a Writing for Justice fellowship from PEN American Center and a Silver Heart Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his “fearless” reporting, spoke to the impact of the grants: “The 2026 Ridgeway Reporting Project grants bring to the public must-read articles about the use of solitary confinement in America. Each RRP story uniquely documents the harms done to people sent to solitary confinement. They shine a light on this archaic and tortuous practice in ways that outside journalists never can.”

Haines added, “Solitary confinement is a failed policy that continues to unnecessarily harm incarcerated people, yet in each story readers will find a sense of the dignity and resiliency of the human spirit that even isolation and abuse cannot fully destroy.” 

In addition to funding, the Ridgeway Reporting Project will provide assistance to incarcerated journalists in shaping their stories, conducting research, and placing their work with publications. 

Solitary Watch, which administers the grant program, is a national nonprofit newsroom that works to uncover the truth about solitary confinement in the United States by producing high-quality investigative journalism, accurate information, and authentic storytelling from both sides of prison walls. Over the past 16 years, Solitary Watch has generated public debate and informed policy change on an underreported humanitarian crisis by promoting awareness, creating accountability, and shifting narratives.”

“When governments strip oversight, cut funding for prison rape prevention, and rebrand torture as policy reform, the only witnesses left are those of us locked inside—and silence is exactly what the system is counting on,” said Solitary Watch senior writer and editor Kwaneta Harris. “The Ridgeway Reporting Project doesn’t just amplify our voices; it is the last line of accountability between what they say happens behind these walls and what actually does. Right now, in this political climate, that is not just journalism—that is survival testimony, and it must be supported.”

The Ridgeway Reporting Project honors the late James Ridgeway (1936-2021). After a 50-year career as an investigative journalist, Ridgeway founded Solitary Watch, and devoted the final decade of his life to exposing inhumane prison conditions. He was a pioneer in his commitment to incarcerated journalists. 

This is the fourth round of the project. A previous project judge, renowned prison journalist Wilbert Rideau, explained the fundamental need to support reporting that originates behind bars: “No matter how knowledgeable one is about the institution of prison, it is only the incarcerated or formerly imprisoned journalist who can take the public into the very heart of the prison experience,” he said. “No one else can provide this vital perspective—not scholars, not outside reporters, and not prison authorities. The voice of the experienced is absolutely necessary.”

2026 Ridgeway Reporting Project Grant Recipients

• Aaron Edward Olson will examine why Ivan the Gorilla’s decades of captivity sparked national outrage resulting in the gorilla’s rescue, while over 100,000 people remain captive in U.S. solitary confinement cells without the same widespread empathy. 
• Cedric Martin will investigate the disparity between Colorado Department of Correction’s claim to have eliminated solitary confinement in 2012 and the lived realities of people in Colorado’s Management Control Custody—Comprehensive unit.
• Darrell Jackson will write about the habitual use of solitary confinement as a policy in the Pierce County Jail in Washington State—and the impact of severe restrictions on visitation with loved ones, often even before the individual is convicted of a crime. 
• Felix Sitthivong will explore various factors that contribute to an incarcerated person being placed in solitary confinement, focusing on how Washington State’s practice of Extended Family Visits, or conjugal visits, nurtures radical love and family connections that contribute to people’s ability to stay out of solitary confinement.
• Joseph Patri Brown will write an essay examining his experience—and the experience of others—transfering from one Mississippi death row unit to the “death house” where they complete the executions, noting that while the new unit allows increased physical freedom, it also imposes increased mental confinement.
• Pamela Smart will assess the implementation of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act in the New York state prison system, specifically highlighting the darker corners where the intention of the law is more easily subverted.
• Razor D. Babb will cover the moratorium on the death penalty in California through the story of Randall Cash, whose death sentence was converted to Life Without Parole, and the unique impacts of “death row syndrome.”

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