New this week from Solitary Watch:

Award-winning incarcerated journalist Kevin D. Sawyer, supported by Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project, recently published an article examining what happens to people who received a “seven-years-to-life” sentence decades ago under an old California law. Known as “7-Ups,” nearly 200 people across the state are incarcerated indefinitely. California has one of the lowest parole rates in the country, and many of these “7-Ups,” now elderly, have spent over half of their lives behind bars. Sawyer tells some of their stories, including members of the Manson Family. Inquest | Solitary Watch 

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

A report uncovered by The Intercept raises new concerns that Malik Muhammad, an incarcerated Black Lives Matter protestor and veteran, may have been transferred across the country as retaliation for their activism around prison conditions in Oregon. Muhammad’s family and lawyers lost contact with them suddenly this March—only to be notified a month later that they were moved thousands of miles away to Kirkland Correctional Institution in South Carolina. Days before the transfer, prison officials filed a misconduct report, accusing Muhammad of promoting “security threat activity.” The report specifically points to their blog, where Muhammad encouraged allies outside the prison to commence a campaign to end their confinement in solitary. Muhammad had been effectively held in solitary for over 250 days. Oregon corrections officials are “punishing Malik for their political beliefs,” according to Muhammad’s attorney. The Oregon Department of Corrections denies this. The Intercept

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation and federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the death of Godfrie Cole, which took place in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), a federal jail in Brooklyn on July 21. The investigation will likely focus on how Cole obtained drugs found in his cell. His cause of death has yet to be announced. Prosecutors argued that information about the circumstances of Cole’s death must be kept private to protect the investigation and asked a judge to deny Cole’s lawyers’ attempt to hold a hearing with Bureau of Prisons officials. Cole is the second incarcerated person to die at MDC Brooklyn in the last four months. New York Daily News | A article published last year by Solitary Watch and The Appeal exposed extended lockdown, violence, and “brutal conditions at MDC, which is New York City’s only federal jail, and holds a variety of high-profile pre-trial detainees including rappers, Wall Street fraudsters, and United Healthcare shooting suspect Luigi Mangione. Solitary Watch

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The Connecticut Department of Correction (DOC) will end its longstanding use of in-cell restraints as part of a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Disability Rights Connecticut. The agreement follows a 2021 lawsuit in which the civil rights groups argued the department’s practice of restraining people with mental illnesses and placing them in solitary constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The ACLU defined in-cell restraints, or in-cell shackling, as “chaining a prisoner’s legs and wrists, binding their hands to their feet with a tether chain, and then leaving them locked in their cell for hours or even days.” The DOC will continue to be allowed to use full-stationary restraints, where correctional officials fasten a person’s arms and legs to a bed. CT Mirror

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A proposed settlement in a class-action lawsuit challenging the use of solitary on youth in North Carolina could significantly change the state’s policy on temporary room confinement at the Cabarrus Juvenile Detention Center. According to a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS) regularly locked young detainees at the facility in their cell alone “for extended periods of time even when juveniles no longer present (or never presented) a threat to others” and “in response to relatively minor rule infractions.” The pending settlement makes only limited changes to NCDPS’s use of what it calls “administrative room confinement,” which allows the department to isolate youth for medical, weather, and security reasons. The Carolina Journal 

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A hunger strike by hundreds of immigration detainees has exposed inhumane conditions at ICE’s Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey. Historians have traced protests back to as early as 1985 in the El Centro Detention Facility in California, but most protests only receive coverage if hundreds of detainees partake. Alex Mensing of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice estimated that hundreds of sit-ins, hunger strikes and other collective actions have occurred in immigration detention centers since the beginning of Trump’s second term. The protestors largely called for basic necessities, including medication, adequate food, medical care, and relief from extreme heat, and faced retaliation through solitary confinement and force feeding. As Dilmer “Loba” Lovos Mendez, who spent two years in California immigration jails, lamented, “It’s the only way that a person inside the detention center can actually have their voices heard.” Truthout

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Hundreds of minors are held in Illinois county youth detention centers ahead of legal proceedings. Despite inspections by the state declaring several non-compliant with health and safety standards due to their use of solitary confinement, a complicated system of oversight has failed to enforce reforms. This year,  the Mary Davis Home in Knox County was closed after the ACLU of Illinois accused the facility of utilizing solitary as punishment, confining detainees to their cells for 23 hours a day with lights constantly on. In 2023, Franklin County’s youth detention center was similarly closed after an ACLU suit over solitary. Although the problems in both facilities were exposed in annual reports from the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, changes were not implemented because they are operated locally by the county board and the chief judge of the circuit court. “You have these facilities that are basically turned into kind of black boxes that are shut off from the outside world, from outside scrutiny,” the legal direction of the ACLU of Illinois said. Northern Public Radio

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A bill summary highlights the federal “Stop Shackling and Detaining Pregnant Women Act,” introduced by Congressional Representative Sylvia R. Garcia and Senator Patty Murray. The bill would bar the shackling of women in ICE custody at any point during pregnancy, labor, and postpartum recovery, and require detention facilities to ensure there is adequate prenatal, postpartum, and reproductive care available. The Department of Homeland Security previously provided Congress with semiannual reports on pregnant, postpartum, and lactating individuals in immigration detention. The Trump administration rescinded this oversight requirement, leading to numerous cases of pregnant immigrants being shackled, placed in solitary, and forced to conduct manual labor. Church World Service 

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