In our society we’re taught to exile the “dark” or “shadow” side of our human nature even farther into the darkness. We push the hurt, wounded psyche into the depths of our shame, where we hope to hide it from everyone at all costs. Prisons are a form of collective exile, a place where we […]
Nearly a decade ago, in a piece published by The Intercept, the late James Ridgeway wrote about U.S. prisons and jails as the locations for a new kind of “banishment,” in which long-term or permanent outcasts are sent to live apart from society—not in some distant land, but in walled-off enclaves not far from our […]
The Correctional Association of New York released a 41-page report documenting “numerous departures” from the letter and spirit of the HALT Solitary Confinement Law. While the overall number of people in solitary confinement in New York has decreased by more than two-thirds following the implementation of HALT, the report finds that facilities have continued to […]
New from Solitary Watch: A new fact sheet from Solitary Watch looks at the relationship between solitary confinement and prison violence. The fact sheet, written by Sara Rain Tree, draws from a broad range of research and reporting to debunk the myth that solitary reduces prison violence, and explores how limiting solitary can in fact […]
Incarcerated men on Texas death row filed a lawsuit challenging their placement in indefinite solitary confinement. The state’s male death row, which is housed in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, has held men in near-total isolation since 1999, after a person escaped from death row. The lawsuit states that the men are locked in their […]
Yesterday, a three-week-long hunger strike by people in Texas prisons came to an end. The strikers were trying to draw attention to the use of solitary confinement in the state. At a time when there is a vigorous movement to end mass incarceration in the United States, it is worth remembering that imprisoned people who […]
Today, Unlock the Box released the first comprehensive report on legislation related to solitary confinement that has been passed or introduced in states and cities across the country, along with an interactive legislation tracking tool. Unlock the Box is “a coalition of organizations and movement leaders who partner with state and local campaigns across the […]
New from Solitary Watch: Katie Rose Quandt, senior contributing writer at Solitary Watch, reports on Republicans’ complaints on the treatment of January 6 defendants at the D.C. Jail. Republican legislators have vocally criticized the use of solitary confinement on those allegedly involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but have remained silent […]
This article was published in partnership with Truthout. Republicans are not known for championing the rights of incarcerated people. Doing so would run counter to their purposefully cultivated “tough on crime” image, which often includes a penchant for harsh prison and jail conditions. But in the two years since the January 6 attack on the U.S. […]
New from Solitary Watch: • Director Jean Casella shares one of Solitary Watch’s first posts from 2009, “Santa Was in Solitary and Jesus Got the Death Penalty,” which tells us more about the two figures at the center of the Christmas holiday. Here in the United States, she writes, “Christians go to church to worship an […]
For 27 years, I’ve lived the cruel reality that is incarceration. I’ve experienced the relentless hypervigilance it creates, the isolation, the feeling of being forgotten and not cared for. I know that the “average American” rarely sees or hears authentic accounts of what I experience. This blindness/deafness to the toxicity of prison life—and of the […]
• • • Today, at least a dozen men incarcerated at Nevada’s Ely State Prison entered the 14th day of a hunger strike protesting “the continued and extended use of solitary confinement.” They are not the first to take a courageous and desperate stand against solitary confinement using the only means available to them, and […]
A Note to Our Readers: Since its founding, Solitary Watch has maintained a correspondence with thousands of people in the deepest, darkest corners of the U.S. punishment system, cut off from human contact and out of sight of the public and the press. They have served as our eyes and ears as we report on […]
New from Solitary Watch: • Yesterday, Solitary Watch announced grants available to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated journalists to report on solitary confinement and other harsh and inhumane prison conditions from the inside out. The Ridgeway Reporting Project honors the legacy of the late investigative journalist and Solitary Watch founder James Ridgeway. The deadline for submissions is […]
The good people who support change in our highly unjust criminal justice system often see a sharp divide between prison abolition and prison reform. Some who are dedicated to ending mass incarceration have been known to ignore or spurn what are commonly known as “conditions issues” like solitary confinement, prison medical and mental health care, […]
This op-ed by Solitary Watch Contributing Writer Juan Moreno Haines appeared yesterday in the Los Angeles Times. Advocates almost succeeded this year in curbing the use of solitary confinement in California’s prisons and jails. The California Mandela Act, named after the long-imprisoned South African president, received the support it needed in August to pass the […]
New from Solitary Watch: • Angela Hattery and Earl Smith share an excerpt from their groundbreaking new book “Way Down in the Hole: Race, Intimacy and the Reproduction of Racial Ideologies in Solitary Confinement.” In this book, Hattery and Smith reveal the ways in which the structure of solitary confinement produces and fuels the conditions of […]
In 2010, the human rights lawyer Juan Méndez was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. To many people in the United States, despite the domestic history of torture, the word carries associations with faraway places and despotic regimes. But Méndez, who was himself tortured in his […]
New this week from Solitary Watch: • Type Investigations and The American Prospect published an investigation by Solitary Watch contributing writers Katie Rose Quandt and Juan Moreno Haines. Quandt and Haines investigated San Quentin State Prison’s continued use of its infamous Adjustment Center, a death row unit designed for solitary confinement, to house people who have […]
Today, Type Investigations and The American Prospect published an investigation by Solitary Watch contributing writers Katie Rose Quandt and Juan Moreno Haines. Quandt and Haines investigated San Quentin State Prison’s continued use of its infamous Adjustment Center, a death row unit designed for solitary confinement, to house people who have contracted or been exposed to […]
• An editorial in Tuesday’s Washington Post carries the headline: “Solitary confinement is torture. U.S. prisons should stop using it.” Citing solitary’s devastating psychological harms, the piece notes that progress in reducing solitary “is encouraging but piecemeal—and would benefit from federal leadership” from the White House. To date, the piece is the strongest statement against solitary […]
New this week from Solitary Watch: • The latest in our series of monthly dispatches, The Word from Solitary Watch, explores depictions of solitary confinement and its myriad harms through film, theater, visual art, and writing. It features the newly released short film “Tuesday Afternoon,” selected as an “Op Doc” by the New York Times, which […]
One week ago, the New York Times featured as its weekly “Op Doc” a short film called “Tuesday Afternoon,” directed by Pete Quandt and co-produced by Solitary Watch. It follows Jack Powers—who spent 33 years in federal prison for bank robbery—on his first day in the free world, traveling from a prison in Pennsylvania to a halfway house in […]
New this week from Solitary Watch: • The Arkansas Department of Corrections has secured $75 million to add new 458 prison beds, partially funded through unused federal COVID-19 funds, reports Katie Rose Quandt. Anti-mass-incarceration organization DecARcerate insists, “when we no longer hold those too poor to buy their freedom, address the failure to appear in a […]
New this week from Solitary Watch: • In the latest installment of The Word, a monthly dispatch from Solitary Watch, Juan Moreno Haines writes about the ongoing use of solitary confinement in San Quentin prison as a failed COVID-19 preventative measure. Haines describes how all programming has been severely curtailed since the epidemic began, and how […]
New this week from Solitary Watch: • Solitary Watch reports on the latest Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities, data collected by the federal government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), reports 75,505 people were held in solitary confinement in state and federal prisons in 2019. This was the first BJS census to ask prisons […]
The most recent data collected and published by the federal government found 75,505 individuals in solitary confinement in the nation’s prisons—a significantly higher number than other recent surveys. The figure comes from the latest Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities, typically conducted every five to seven years by the Bureau of Justice Statistics […]
New this week from Solitary Watch: • Solitary Watch Director Jean Casella looks at the response from anti-solitary advocates to President Biden’s Executive Order issued last month, which gives the Attorney General (AG) six months to submit a report on progress towards ending long-term solitary confinement. In a press release, the Federal Anti-Solitary Task Force (FAST) […]
• The Vera Institute of Justice published an article writing about the “Crisis of Isolation” in lockup as a response to the pandemic. They describe the emotional toll on families when prisons denied visits between incarcerated people and their loved ones, and Clinique Chapman, associate director for Vera and MILPA’s Restoring Promise initiative, states, “The impact […]