• As temperatures in New York dropped to ten degrees last week, the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn—a facility operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons that houses 1,600 mostly pretrial individuals—lost power and administrators locked down the facility for several days, leaving many detained individuals without heat, lighting, warm meals, clean clothing, medical […]
• The New York Times reported that 36-year-old Lamekia Dockery, mother of five children, died in July of last year at the Elkhart Community Corrections facility in Indiana after being denied medical attention for six days. In response to Dockery’s constant vomiting and screams of pain, correctional staff accused her of lying, wrote her up […]
• On January 16, Paul Ford died in his solitary cell at Kilby Prison, the second incarcerated person in the custody of Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) to commit suicide this year. Although Ford had been diagnosed with a mood disorder and had attempted suicide several times before while in prison, his mental health screening for placement […]
• Disability Right Montana recently released a report that found youth being placed in solitary confinement for months at a time at Pine Hills Youth Correctional Facility in Miles City, Montana. According to the Billings Gazette, one teenage boy reported serving nearly 100 of his first 234 days in solitary, including 71 days consecutively. Disability […]
• The Associated Press reported on a lawsuit filed by immigrant youth held at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center in Virginia. The suit claims that the children faced physical restraints, solitary confinement, and abuse from the detention center staff. A child development specialist recalled, “They would get put in isolation for months for things like picking […]
• The Guardian published an article on Anthony Ray Hinton’s recently released book The Sun Does Shine, in which he discusses his 30 years of wrongful imprisonment as a Black man in the Alabama prison system for three murders he did not commit. Hinton describes his years spent in solitary confinement, “barely able to breath in […]
• According to the Alabama Political Reporter, Federal District Judge Myron Thompson last week ordered the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) to either remove individuals with serious mental illness from solitary confinement or provide a reason for their placement in solitary. Thompson ruled last summer that mental health care in the Alabama prison system was […]
• The Connecticut Law Tribune reported the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to reverse the $62,650 reparations originally awarded to Almighty Supreme Born Allah, a man from New Britain, Connecticut, for the violation of his constitutional rights and psychological trauma inflicted by solitary confinement. Allah was subjected to solitary […]
• East Bay Express reported that as of Friday, October 20, 125 out of 412 individuals incarcerated in Glenn Dyer Jail in Oakland had entered their sixth day of a hunger strike. At the forefront of the demands is an end to indefinite solitary confinement. While the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson claims isolation is […]
• Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham penned a piece about solitary confinement. “We like to think of ourselves as enlightened here in Massachusetts,” she writes. “But when it comes to how we treat inmates in our jails and prisons, a bunch of other states have us beat.” • Senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren introduced The Dignity […]
• An article published on Newsweek charts recent scientific research into how solitary confinement affects the brain. As Angola 3 member Robert King has said, “I can tell you from experience: If you’ve done time in solitary confinement, you’ve been damaged. Even if you survive it, it has an impact on you.” • Philly.com published […]