Solitary Watch

by Sara Vogel

October 29, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch: When JD was arrested and placed in solitary confinement, her body was “still healing from a difficult labor, still bleeding, still adjusting after birth, still overwhelmed by the hormonal storm that every mother endures in those first fragile weeks.” Despite exhibiting signs of postpartum depression and aggravated symptoms of […]

by Juan Moreno Haines

October 28, 2025

This commentary is the latest in “The Word from Solitary Watch,” our series of dispatches by Solitary Watch staff and contributors. • Earlier this month, I learned from colleagues that October 10 was being marked by the World Health Organization as World Mental Health Day.  My first reaction was that when you live in one […]

by Samantha Santoro

October 22, 2025

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: President Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of former Republican Representative George Santos, citing concern over Santos’s placement in solitary. Trump announced the move on Truth Social, stating: “George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been […]

by Voices from Solitary

October 21, 2025

Fifteen years ago, JD was incarcerated in a Pennsylvania jail while experiencing postpartum symptoms. Despite having given birth less than a month prior, she was placed in solitary confinement. Now, as a board member of a non-profit that provides services for justice-impacted women, JD knows all too well how often incarcerated women’s needs and struggles […]

by Emily Engel

October 15, 2025

News this week from Solitary Watch: In her latest piece for Solitary Watch, Kwaneta Harris describes how 11 days in a hospital cell brought her to new places of psychological suffering. She initially thought that her temporary transfer for medical treatment would bring relief, but instead she endured darkness for hours on end and was […]

by Kwaneta Harris

October 14, 2025

What they don’t tell you about solitary confinement is how it shape-shifts, morphing into forms you never expected, slipping through the cracks of places supposedly designed for healing. I learned this lesson in the most bitter way possible at the prison hospital in Galveston, Texas, where care became just another word for control, and medical […]

by Samantha Santoro

October 8, 2025

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: A recent investigation revealed that children incarcerated at the Youth Justice and Education Center in Shelby County (Memphis), Tennessee, are being held in solitary confinement for months at a time. For eight months, one young person was isolated in a concrete cell less than half […]

by Emily Engel

October 1, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch: In a recent press release, Solitary Watch announced that eight incarcerated journalists with first-hand experience of solitary confinement will receive grants through the Ridgeway Reporting Project. The financial and editorial assistance provided by the project will support these journalists’ original reporting on often overlooked topics, including the experience of […]

by Samantha Santoro

September 24, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  In her latest piece for Solitary Watch, incarcerated journalist Kwaneta Harris brings attention to the epidemic of suicide and self-harm that plagues U.S. prisons and jails. Rather than receiving support, individuals who attempt suicide or engage in self-harm are often placed in solitary confinement, which is known to worsen […]

by Jean Casella

September 23, 2025

Today we issued the following press release. We are grateful for the generosity of the Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation, the Vital Projects Fund and readers like you, who make it possible for us to support the work of incarcerated journalists. We also are grateful for the courage and tenacity of these eight individuals, who […]

by Kwaneta Harris

September 19, 2025

The Forgotten Crisis “She’s cutting again,” the guard announced with all the enthusiasm of saying, “The Pope is Catholic.” Another day, another self-harm incident; just routine paperwork in a system that has normalized human suffering. Let’s call her Melissa, barely in her twenties and a mother of six children, had added fresh wounds to her […]

by Emily Engel

September 17, 2025

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: Supported by Congress’s recent approval of $45 billion to expand immigrant detention over the next four years, the Trump administration plans to reopen many former prisons and detention centers that were closed due to “concerns about violence, medical neglect, and systemic understaffing.” At one of […]

by Samantha Santoro

September 10, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  Rejon Taylor writes about the 16 years he lived in solitary confinement on death row in Louisiana before his sentence was commuted by President Joe Biden in December 2024. Less than a month later, President Trump issued an executive order calling for the increased use of the death penalty […]

by Voices from Solitary

September 4, 2025

Rejon Taylor has spent more than half his life behind bars. In 2008, he was sentenced to death for a homicide committed when he was 18 years old. For 16 years, he lived in solitary confinement on death row at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Despite struggling with temporal lobe epilepsy and PTSD, […]

by Samantha Santoro

September 3, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  Juan Moreno Haines, Solitary Watch’s editor-in-chief and an award-winning journalist incarcerated at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, recently reviewed Pete Earley’s latest book, No Human Contact: Solitary Confinement, Maximum Security, and Two Inmates Who Changed the System. The book tells the story of two members of the Aryan Brotherhood serving […]

by Juan Moreno Haines

September 2, 2025

The following book review, written by Juan Moreno Haines, was originally published in Wall City Magazine. About ten years ago, while working at San Quentin News, I began writing about incarcerated people subjected to solitary confinement in California. My stories covered both Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit, the SHU (pronounced “shoe”), and San Quentin State […]

by Isadora Evers

August 27, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch: In a story co-published with Truth Out, Solitary Watch contributing writer Kwanetta Harris writes about Black August, a month of mourning and mobilization to celebrate the lives Black liberation figures. The piece commemorates figures like Jonathan and George Jackson, brothers who were killed by San Quentin prison guards in […]

by Kwaneta Harris

August 22, 2025

The following story is co-published with Truthout. The concrete tomb they built to bury our revolution has become the very ground from which it grows. From behind these concrete walls and steel bars, where time moves differently and hope becomes a revolutionary act, I write to you about Black August—a month that prison administrators would […]

by Isadora Evers

August 20, 2025

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: James Ramirez is just one of an “alarmingly high” number of people who have died while in custody at Cibola County Correctional Center (CCCC), a federal facility outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, that primarily holds people detained by the U.S. Marshals and Immigration and Customs […]

by Surina Venkat

August 13, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  Jailhouse lawyer and investigative journalist Sara Kielly describes her experience representing a client, Née, who was facing time in solitary confinement for a disciplinary infraction. Using New York’s Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement (HALT) Act, Kielly was able to keep her client out of restrictive housing. “Without HALT […]

by Voices from Solitary

August 7, 2025

Sara Kielly is an investigative journalist and jailhouse lawyer whose writing has been featured in Solitary Watch, Slate, New York Focus, and other outlets. As an Irish-American transgender woman incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York, she uses both her journalism and legal advocacy to expose the harms of solitary confinement and the […]

by Isadora Evers

August 6, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  Solitary Watch’s tenth fact sheet, entitled “Solitary Confinement and Prison Activism,” details how solitary confinement is used “as a way of deterring people in prison from stepping out of line.” The fact sheet documents the history of solitary as punishment for incarcerated people who protest the carceral system in […]

by Jean Casella

August 1, 2025

Solitary confinement is frequently used as a way of deterring people in prison from stepping out of line, and punishing them when they do. Prisons often interpret organizing as a threat to institutional power and control, and do everything they can to prevent people from advocating for their civil rights or for better treatment.

by Lena Massengale

July 30, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  Natasha White survived four years in solitary confinement, and is now a movement leader and writer. Her recent piece for Voices from Solitary is a moving account of her experience that depicts resilience in the face of physical and psychological torment. White emphasizes that although people may survive solitary […]

by Surina Venkat

July 23, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  Solitary Watch reprinted an excerpt from Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull’s powerful new book The Jailhouse Lawyer: Fighting Abuse and Forced Medication at Angola Prison. In the book, Duncan—who was wrongfully convicted at 19 years old and spent more than 28 years in Louisiana prisons—recounts his time at the […]

by Voices from Solitary

July 22, 2025

Natasha White is a movement leader, writer, and survivor of solitary confinement. After serving 15 years in the New York State prison system—including four in solitary confinement—she is now a leader in the fight against the brutality of the carceral system. As the Coordinator for the Virginia Coalition on Solitary Confinement and the Director of […]