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 […]
This is the first of a new series of monthly dispatches from Solitary Watch. Two weeks ago, a Tuesday morning in New York City, where I live, began with shock and horror. A man riding the subway at rush hour shot multiple passengers in a crowded car. Ten people suffered gunshot wounds and at least thirteen others […]
In May 2021, Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania became the first jurisdiction in the United States to ban nearly all uses of solitary confinement by a referendum of the county’s voters, following years of abuse allegations and multiple suicides at the county jail. The new policy was supposed to go into effect in December, but, as […]
• On the New York Times’ The Daily podcast, reporter Adam Liptak discusses the case of Dennis Wayne Hope, a Texas man who has spent the past 27 years in solitary confinement. Hope’s lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to consider whether such prolonged isolation violates his Eighth Amendment rights. If the Supreme Court decides to […]
• Spectrum News Albany reports that New York’s HALT Solitary Confinement Act went into effect on April 1st. The legislation, which was signed into law in 2021, ends the use of solitary confinement in state prisons and local jails for some groups and limits its use to 15 days for everyone else. Though it has been […]
• The Vera Institute of Justice published a report outlining their guidelines for humane and ethical medical quarantine, insisting that because of COVID-19, “far too many people were left behind in unsafe facilities that have used solitary confinement cells and implemented solitary confinement conditions in regular cells.” Among their list of requirements are a sanitary living […]
• KTVH reports that the Montana Department of Corrections has settled a case with Disability Rights Montana, agreeing to provide people with “severe mental illness” with “appropriate care, treatment, and housing.” While the litigation was ongoing, 12 people with mental health issues died by suicide in the prison. Recently, the Western News reported on the “unreasonable […]
At Connecticut’s Cheshire Correctional Institution, Muhammad and his blockmates are often locked in their cells for upwards of twenty-two hours a day. The lockdowns have put tremendous stress on the men, according to Muhammad, and when they are let out, guards sometimes curse at them and encourage fights. “Tempers are raging to a boiling point,” […]
• The Colorado Sun reports that the state legislature rejected a bill that would have created a commission responsible for ensuring local jails follow protocol regarding health standards, food and visitation services, and use of solitary confinement. The legislature instead opted to send the bill for further study. Legislation that limits solitary confinement in local jails […]
• A Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee voted to amend legislation that would have limited solitary confinement to 15 days to instead require that prison officials study the issue, reports the Virginia Mercury. One of the bill’s advocates, Delegate Patrick Hope, stated, “I don’t want a study, but the alternative was that this bill was going […]
After a bold campaign promise, the president has remained almost silent as thousands languish in solitary in federal prisons. Advocates say they remain hopeful that he will find his voice on the issue. This story was published in partnership with The Appeal. “Biden believes no act can justify the inhumane treatment of an individual in […]
• The Washington Post Editorial Board published an opinion piece discussing the ongoing, 27-year solitary confinement of Dennis Hope, stating, “Solitary confinement is a sanitized term for torture.” The article describes Hope’s pleas to the Supreme Court, and highlights that the last phone call he was permitted to make was in 2013, when Hope’s mother passed […]
Today, the Washington Post published an editorial titled “Call Solitary Confinement What It Is: Torture.” It is the strongest condemnation yet by a major national newspaper of the practice used on tens of thousands of people in U.S. prisons and jails. (Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the estimate was at least 80,000; now the number […]
• The New York Times reports that in Texas, a lawsuit filed by Dennis Hope asking for relief from his prolonged isolation is headed for the U.S. Supreme Court. Hope, who is represented by the MacArthur Justice Center, has been in solitary confinement for 27 years. He was put in solitary after he escaped prison in […]
• Peter Robbins, the original voice of the Charlie Brown cartoon, died by suicide last week, reports The Mercury News. After his release in 2019, he “expressed hope that he could turn his life around after struggling for years with mental illness, addiction and “manic,” threatening behavior.” But he also described his time in prison as […]
• Intelligencer published an article covering the history of the anti-solitary movement at Rikers Island, where author Matt Steib concludes, “under Mayor Eric Adams, it appears solitary isn’t going anywhere.” AMNY reported on a January 20 protest against solitary outside City Hall. In The Nation, Victoria Law interviewed Candie Hailey, who was held pre-trial in solitary […]