New this week from Solitary Watch:

The latest piece from Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project features the stories of Rahkeem Brown and Jayquan Griffin—two men incarcerated in New York suspected of ingesting contraband and forced to spend days in isolation while providing officers stool samples. These special watch cells, known among incarcerated people as “shit rooms,” are notoriously ripe for abuse, and many have reported unsanitary conditions, dehydration, and a lack of food and medical care. Vague limits on how long someone can be held to search for contraband resulted in another man spending over two months in a watch cell without staff ever recovering any contraband. NewYork Focus | Solitary Watch 

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Solitary Watch Senior Writer and Editor Kwaneta Harris reports on her own experience surviving solitary confinement and raises alarm about how it disproportionately affects survivors of abuse. “Eight and a half years in a cell smaller than most people’s parking spaces, with no meaningful human contact, no natural light, no sense of time beyond what my body could remember,” writes Harris. While the psychological toll of solitary impacts all survivors, 86 percent of incarcerated women report having experienced sexual violence and 77 percent report inmate partner violence. As the number of incarcerated women grows, prison systems often force those deeply affected by years of abuse into an isolated room with nowhere to go. Solitary Watch

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

Sentenced to death at the age of 18, Christina Pike spent nearly 30 years in solitary confinement as the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. The state has held her to be among “the worst of the worst,” and her execution date remains scheduled for September 30, 2026. Pike’s legal team has argued for clemency after uncovering the relentless abuse she had endured as a child, including multiple rapes and beatings as early as two years old. Despite Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signing legislation establishing the death penalty for those who rape children, the state is days away from executing a victim of it. “If they execute Christa Pike, it will confirm that the death penalty is reserved not for the worst of the worst, but for the most damaged and vulnerable among us,” said Sandra Babcock, faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. The Guardian | Experts from the United Nations are calling for an immediate halt to Pike’s execution, arguing “[t]he extraordinary duration of Pike’s isolation on death row, her detention conditions, compounded by her vulnerable situation and prolonged awareness of her impending execution, amounts to torture.” United Nations

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In 2006, Fahad Hashmi was arrested as he prepared to board a plane to his birth country in Pakistan. A U.S. citizen, Hashmi was charged with four counts related to providing support and services to al Qaeda and extradited to New York, where spent three years in solitary confinement awaiting trial. Post 9/11, “material support” prosecutions became a way of criminalizing association with certain religious and political groups, even without any connection to a crime or plot. Muslim men were disproportionately impacted by these laws, and civil rights lawyers became increasingly adamant about challenging inhumane conditions of confinement faced by those charged with terrorism–related offenses. As the Trump administration continues to broaden the definition of a domestic terrorist, the vague nature of material support laws create “shape-shifting space into which all sorts of constitutionally protected activities can be thrown and classified as suspect.” Boston Review

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Alim Braxton recounts the morning of September 11, 2001 as the only Muslim on death row in North Carolina. As others on his block buzzed with speculation and listened to radios in real time, Braxton “sat in suspense, waiting for updates to be delivered through the walls.” Suddenly, Islam became an enemy. As the post-9/11 patriotism and Islamophobia spread across his facility, new restrictions on communal prayer in general population eroded the community that had once represented Black consciousness behind bars. After being released from solitary confinement in 2004, Braxton became determined to rebuild his spiritual community. In 2011, he was elected imam of his facility and the response from his peers was immediate. Friday prayers returned, kufis reappeared, and Braxton’s role as spiritual leader “became more than a position—it became the purpose [he] had fought for in [his] darkest moment.” Inquest

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In a 2014 class action lawsuit, people detained at Colorado’s Aurora Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center allege that the private facility operator GEO Group threatened them with solitary confinement if they refused to clean common areas of the facility. Detainees were paid $1 per day. After prior attempts to stop litigation were dismissed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, GEO Group again appealed for the case to be thrown out, citing qualified immunity. Judge John L. Kane heard arguments in June, but had not yet issued a ruling. Despite this, GEO Group appealed to the 10th Circuit for the third time, challenging a decision that was never made. Both Kane and the 10th Circuit ruled for the lawsuit to continue to trial. Colorado Politics

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Martin Soto was one of hundreds of immigrants moved out of Delaney Hall this past Spring, as protests grew outside the facility in response to hunger and labor strikes organized by detainees. In an open letter, strikers condemned the poor food and inadequate medical care at Delaney Hall and demanded freedom, starting with those who have pre-existing medical conditions, women, and children. As an attempt to break the hunger strike from within, hundreds detainees were transferred to 32 different facilities across ten states. Soto, whose wife was a lead organizer for the outside protests, was placed in solitary confinement at another ICE detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he has remained. “They want to break the bonds between the people inside the facility,” said Kathy O’Leary, a member of Eyes on ICE, a solidarity group assisting detainees and their families. According to Soto’s wife, there’s nobody left from the strike residing in Delaney Hall. The City Reporter

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Instead of spending money on housing, education, and healthcare, the state of Illinois is proposing a $1.1 billion new prison project. Known as Rehabilitation and Restoration Inside Safe Environments, it is intended to replace the Stateville and Logan correctional facilities. If built, its two new campuses would house 2,750 people and include green spaces, natural light, robust programming, and several solitary confinement “restricted housing units.” However, local community members, incarcerated people, and their families say that the new proposal would not solve the inhumane conditions and practices that are endemic in Illinois prisons. Since June 2025, at least nine incarcerated people have died by suicide inside Illinois’s restrictive housing units. Chicago Tribune

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A new report from the South Carolina American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found a disproportionate number of Black children end up in the state’s juvenile justice system. Although they only make up 28 percent of the state’s 18-and-under population, Black youth make up 75 percent of the juvenile justice population. The report details the dangers and inhumane conditions faced by incarcerated youth in 2025, including 36 isolation critical incident reports. “Vulnerable youth are suffering through a crisis in the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice, and our state owes them a chance at real healing and rehabilitation,” said South Carolina ACLU Executive Director Jace Woodrum. WACHFox57

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