New this week from Solitary Watch:

In a piece originally published in The Progressive and supported by the Ridgeway Reporting Project, incarcerated journalist Kevin Light-Roth explores the impact of solitary confinement on the loved ones of incarcerated people. “Powerless to intervene, they are forced to watch their loved ones freefall into mental health crises and physical decline,” writes Light-Roth. Through the stories of two women with loved ones in solitary, Light-Roth highlights the unique ways people find hope and transform anger to overcome the challenges of staying connected to someone in solitary. Progressive | Solitary Watch 

---

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

Youth prisons across the state of Texas were put on a multi-day lockdown following an assault on an officer at Gainesville Juvenile Correctional Facility. Extended cell confinement places youth at “high risk of harmful psychiatric effects, including hallucinations, paranoia, depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide.” Records from during the lockdowns reveal disturbing evidence of youth swallowing ceiling vent screws, urinating on themselves, cutting and reopening wounds, banging their heads against the walls, and making ligatures from clothing and bedding. Despite official statements that staff are required to immediately intervene “when youth are in danger of serious self-harm,” logs indicate officers did not conduct safety checks in multiple facilities and waited up to 40 minutes to enter cells and remove ligatures from youth. Lisa Capers, a former juvenile justice training director, described the situation as a “self-perpetuating disaster,” where kids’ violence is both caused by and responded to with isolation. KERA News

---

Anti-solitary advocates gathered in Buffalo, New York, to call for the full implementation of the Humane Alternatives to Long-term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act. “Too many people inside are being denied hope,” said Thomas Gant, an organizer with the Center for Community Alternatives. According to several organizations in attendance, strengthening HALT also means passing three other proposed bills that eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, allow incarcerated people to apply for re-sentencing hearings, and increase earned time off sentences. Despite HALT’s success in reducing the number of people kept in solitary confinement, a panel of correctional unions and New York gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman are calling for it to be repealed. The Buffalo News | For the first time in its history, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association (NYSCOPBA) has endorsed a gubernatorial candidate—Republican Bruce Blakeman. The desire to repeal HALT is central to the endorsement from NYSCOPBA, which claims it is “driven by safety concerns inside state prisons, including assaults on staff.” Repealing HALT would not only increase the amount of time people spend in solitary, but also make vulnerable populations, like pregnant and disabled people, eligible to be punished with solitary. 6News

---

Otay Mesa Detention Center in California was placed on lockdown during a pre-planned visit from unidentified officials. Despite no such lockdowns occurring during previous visits from congressional representatives, detainees were deprived access to communication, food, and bathrooms. After hours spent waiting to use the bathroom, staff instructed detainees to urinate in cleaning buckets inside their cells. One man was threatened with solitary confinement if he did not obey orders to use the bucket. Daylight San Diego

---

For years, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility near Aurora, Colorado, has faced allegations of serious abuse, neglect, and civil rights violations. A coalition of immigrant rights organizations organized an event outside the facility to share the experiences of those detained inside. Personal testimonies and 911 calls from the facility described medical neglect, poor nutrition, and the use of solitary to pressure people into self-deporting, as well as against transgender immigrants who refused to be housed according to their sex assigned at birth. Sentinel

---

Last month, around a hundred detainees at the Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Texas, were gassed and pepper sprayed for gathering to protest conditions at the facility, including overcrowding, poor food, lack of medical care, and lingering fumes. Most of the protest’s participants were placed in solitary confinement. “We are human beings and we deserve respect and, above all, the right to be treated humanely,” said Rafael Alambarrio, who spent a month in solitary alongside other protest organizers. News From The States

---

Nearly two years after a social worker reported solitary confinement was used to punish people with mental illness on Rikers Island, the practice, known as “deadlocking,” is still being debated by the New York City Council. Despite the Department of Corrections claiming no use of the practice, several Legal Aid Society clients have reported being deadlocked and cut off from healthcare, programming, and other people in custody in the years after the practice was first reported. One incarcerated person who was deadlocked on and off for a year described experiencing hallucinations and not receiving medical care until they began to self-harm. Queens Daily Eagle

---

In a personal essay, Cameron Terhune describes the extreme isolation he experienced on death row at California’s Stanislaus County Jail. While he was on lockdown 24-hours a day with only one hour of recreation per week, Terhune’s mental health deteriorated. After attempting to take his own life, he writes, he was sent to the prison’s psych ward, pumped full of psychiatric drugs, and returned to the general population. Immediately, he was sent “straight to the hole” for behavior caused by overwhelming anxiety from the adjustment. Terhune writes that even after 15 years of being out of solitary, he still faces the lasting psychological toll of solitary. He never feels comfortable with other people in enclosed spaces, the sounds of keys, banging doors, too much noise, or too much silence. Vanguard

---

Ellis Mosher writes that he is living in a “clean version of hell.” Currently housed at the only federal supermax prison, the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, he is always alone—locked in a cell for 24 hours a day three days a week and 22 hours a day the other four. When not in his cell, Mosher is allowed recreation in a concrete yard the size of a small parking space or escorted around with his hands and ankles swollen from shackles. Between 1999 and 2023, there were 13 documented suicides at ADX. Despite proof that solitary causes self-harm, suicide, and other psychological distress, the Federal Bureau of Prisons continues to hold people in extreme isolation. Vanguard

---

Action Alerts:

The End of Isolation, a film co-directed by playwright and solitary survivor Sarah Shourd and filmmaker Bobby Field, will make its New York premiere at the Bushwick Film Festival on Sunday, October 11, from 2:30 to 4:15 pm. The film “traces a journey across the United States, where formerly incarcerated people are reimagining justice and building a more humane future.” Following a group of theatre activists as they tour a play about solitary confinement, the film highlights the “vibrant and visionary” resistance taking place in states where “incarceration is particularly inhumane.” The screening will be followed by a conversation with the filmmakers and local activists. Bushwick Film Festival

---

Get this weekly roundup in your mail every Wednesday, covering the past seven days of solitary confinement news and commentary. Subscribe today.

The work we do is made possible by your support. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation—large or small—today.