Solitary Watch

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 […]

by Katie Rose Quandt

July 21, 2025

In an article supported by Solitary Watch and published by Slate, Senior Writer/Editor Katie Rose Quandt dug into the changes that have taken place in the federal Bureau of Prisons since Donald Trump took office. Read the article here or on Slate’s website. As millions of Americans take to the streets in opposition to President […]

by Isadora Evers

July 16, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  In the latest edition of Voices from Solitary, Malika Henderson, an incarcerated abolitionist from North Philadelphia, writes about the devastating isolation, undernutrition, and dehumanization she experienced in solitary confinement at SCI Muncy. Henderson is the lead plaintiff in the groundbreaking class action lawsuit, Hammod vs. PADOC, challenging the constitutionality […]

by Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull

July 15, 2025

The following piece is an excerpt from the new book The Jailhouse Lawyer, written by formerly incarcerated lawyer Calvin Duncan and criminal justice reform advocate Sophie Cull. Just released last week, the book recounts Calvin’s decades of imprisonment at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, the largest maximum security prison in the United States, for […]

by Katie Rose Quandt

July 10, 2025

In an article supported by Solitary Watch and published this week by The Progressive in its magazine and online, Solitary Watch Senior Writer/Editor Katie Rose Quandt exposes the incontrovertible link between solitary confinement and the epidemic numbers of suicides in U.S. prisons and jails. An excerpt appears below; read the full article on the website […]

by Surina Venkat

July 9, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  In an article co-published by The Appeal, Solitary Watch’s Katie Rose Quandt and Maeve Brennan report on the “dangerous, barbaric conditions” at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), a federal jail in Brooklyn. Lockdowns emulating solitary confinement have become increasingly frequent in response to rising violence at the facility. The […]

by Voices from Solitary

July 7, 2025

Malika Henderson is a 30-year-old incarcerated abolitionist from North Philadelphia. Henderson has been incarcerated for 12 years, including nine years in solitary confinement at various times. In addition to utilizing every means available to elevate herself while behind bars, Henderson stands up for the human rights of her fellow incarcerated women and fights to end […]

by Lena Massengale

July 2, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  In her latest piece, incarcerated journalist and Solitary Watch Contributing Writer Kwaneta Harris exposes the systemic abuse and psychological violence faced by LGBTQAI+ individuals in prison and solitary confinement. Harris’s writing highlights how incarceration punishes queer identity while mainstream Pride celebrations too often ignore the experiences of those inside. […]

by Voices from Solitary

July 1, 2025

Sean Chaney is a formerly incarcerated artist who served a total of 18 years in various federal prisons before returning home in January 2025. Chaney spent significant time in solitary confinement, including a total of 12 years isolated at Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Lewisburg in Pennsylvania. While FCI Lewisburg is infamous for its brutal use […]

by Katie Rose Quandt and Maeve Brennan

June 30, 2025

This article is co-published with The Appeal. In February, a violent fight broke out in the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), a federal jail in Brooklyn. It left people like Sean Chaney, who was released in January after spending 15 months in MDC, scrambling to learn the status of his friend and former cellmate, who was […]

by Kwaneta Harris

June 26, 2025

The fluorescent lights in solitary confinement hummed overhead as I watched my friend Jack’s shoulders slump under the weight of another degrading lecture. The guard’s voice dropped with contempt as he told Jack, a transgender man, that he was “going to Hell” for his identity. This wasn’t the first time—or the last—that I witnessed staff […]

by Surina Venkat

June 25, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  For our latest piece of original journalism, “A Sliver of Light,” reporter Edward Tie traveled to a remote prison in eastern Oregon to witness the work of Amend at the University of California San Francisco, which is working with correctional staff to get the toughest cases out of long-term […]

by Edward Tie

June 24, 2025

Jay Marriott entered the common room at Snake River Correctional Facility, his six-foot frame swaying slightly—his body, perhaps, adjusting to an unfamiliar lightness. For years, he had been bound in shackles every time he left his small cell, burdened by chains that gripped his hands, feet, and body. Now, as he sat at the desk, […]