New this week from Solitary Watch: Only two days remain in November, when all donations to Solitary Watch will be TRIPLED through NewsMatch. Donations in any amount are deeply valued and appreciated. Please consider making a donation today. ___________________________________________________________________________ This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: In mid-October, as part of a […]

New this week from Solitary Watch: Solitary Watch has appointed award-winning journalist Juan Moreno Haines to serve as editor-in-chief. With this appointment, Haines becomes one of a very few currently incarcerated individuals to hold a leadership position at a newsroom or nonprofit organization. Haines has spent 27 years in the California prison system and served […]

Earlier this week, Solitary Watch announced some very exciting news with the following press release. The appointment of incarcerated journalist Juan Moreno Haines as our editor-in-chief ushers in a new era for us, in which we will deepen our longstanding commitment to supporting and publishing the work of incarcerated writers. Juan is the perfect person to […]

The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from an incarcerated man in Illinois who argued that his prolonged solitary confinement and denial of outdoor exercise violates the Eighth Amendment. Michael Johnson, the plaintiff, spent three years in solitary in a small, windowless cell at Pontiac Correctional Center in Illinois, where he was routinely […]

This article is published in partnership with the Davis Vanguard and Kansas City Defender. Maguire Correctional Facility lies just a few blocks from San Francisco Bay, and serves as the main jail for San Mateo County. A largely affluent suburban area that connects the city of San Francisco to the north and famed Silicon Valley […]

Timothy James Young, currently 53 years old, has been incarcerated for 24 years, and has lived on San Quentin State Prison’s Death Row for 17 of them. Young has maintained his innocence since his arrest, and believes that false testimony against him only arose from a deal with a jail informant. Living on Death Row, […]

New this week from Solitary Watch: This week, Solitary Watch Senior Writers Juan Moreno Haines and Katie Rose Quandt were named winner of the 2023 Media for a Just Society Award in the category of “Media by a Person Who is Incarcerated” for their article titled “San Quentin Is Still Punishing People for Being Sick.” […]

Incarcerated writer Kwaneta Harris writes that after seven years in solitary confinement,  “Reading has been my lifeline… after seven years in solitary confinement. With my earplugs jammed in deep—sometimes too deep—I’ve read books, magazines, and newspapers and found respite amid tortuous conditions. That includes no air conditioning, TV, or recreation.” But at the Lane Murray […]

New From Solitary Watch: In the latest edition of our monthly dispatch “The Word from Solitary Watch,” director Jean Casella discusses the new report Calculating Torture, which undertakes the most complete count to date of people in solitary in prisons and jails, and lands on the shocking figure of 122,840. The numbers matter, she writes, […]

Two weeks ago today, Solitary Watch and the Unlock the Box campaign published Calculating Torture, a report showing that at least 122,840 people are in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. Ours is the first report to provide a snapshot of all individuals in solitary confinement for 22 hours or more a day in […]

The watchdog group Solitary Watch and the advocacy coalition Unlock the Box released a groundbreaking joint report showing that at least 122,840 people are locked daily in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails for 22 or more hours a day. Calculating Torture (LINK: PDF) is the first report to combine the use of solitary […]

New from Solitary Watch: A groundbreaking joint report from Solitary Watch ​and the advocacy coalition Unlock the Box shows that at least 122,840 people are locked daily in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails for 22 or more hours a day. Previous reports have offered an incomplete picture of how extensively the discredited practice […]

Solitary Watch and Unlock the Box sent out the following press release on the morning of May 23, 2023. Washington, DC — The watchdog group Solitary Watch and the advocacy coalition Unlock the Box today released a groundbreaking joint report showing that at least 122,840 people are locked daily in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons […]

New from Solitary Watch:  In April’s installation of “The Word from Solitary Watch,” contributing writer Sarah Shourd writes about the extreme oppression of solitary confinement, and the incredible resilience of the human spirit in the face of it. Shourd highlights the organizing that has taken place inside prisons over the decades, from the Attica uprising […]

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, […]