California

Immigrant Detainees Went on Hunger Strike Against Intolerable Conditions and COVID Exposure. ICE Punished Them with Solitary Confinement.

Solitary Confinement Reporting Project

This exposé of abusive practices at the ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, was written by Renée Feltz, who received a grant from the Solitary Confinement Reporting Project, administered by Solitary Watch with funding from the Vital Projects Fund. Feltz is the Co-Director of Democracy Now! News and an award-winning investigative journalist who has covered criminal justice and […]

Seven Days in Solitary [1/18/20]

Valerie Kiebala
ADX Florence Towers

• The Associated Press reported that all federal prisons have been locked down in anticipation of the potentially violent protests that could erupt across the country on the inauguration day of Joe Biden. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has reportedly begun to move some of its Special Operations Response Team (SORT) from federal prisons to […]

Seven Days in Solitary [1/4/20]

Valerie Kiebala
Lemon Creek Correctional Facility

• According to the Mercury News, 57-year-old Todd Ashker filed a complaint about the “torturous” conditions in solitary at Kern Valley State Prison. Ashker was the lead plaintiff in a 2016 landmark settlement that ordered Ashker and hundreds of others to be released from solitary confinement at the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU). But years […]

Fourteen Days in Solitary [12/21/20]

Valerie Kiebala

• The New Orleans Lens reported that the non-profit Promise of Justice Initiative (PJI) released a report, claiming that prison administrators and staff responded inadequately to the coronavirus pandemic, causing unnecessary death and suffering. The report found, “Principally, correctional officials [in Louisiana] responded to COVID- 19 or exposure to the virus by placing people in solitary confinement or putting portions […]

Seven Days in Solitary [10/12/20]

Valerie Kiebala

• According to the Washington Post, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Durbin sent two letters to U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Director Michael Carvajal: one condemning federal prisons’ reliance on solitary confinement during the pandemic and the second calling the BOP to act immediately to stop the spread of the […]

Seven Days in Solitary [10/5/20]

Valerie Kiebala
Lemon Creek Correctional Facility

• The Georgetown Law Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, along with 68 current and former prosecutors and U.S. Department of Justice officials, filed a brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit calling for Dennis Hope to be released from solitary confinement in Texas. Hope has spent the last 26 years in […]

Seven Days in Solitary [9/7/20]

Valerie Kiebala
ADX Florence Towers

• Sara “Mariposa” Fonseca, who has been incarcerated for eighteen years in the California state prison system, including several years in solitary confinement, will be released from prison on September 11, 2020. During her lonest stinct in solitary, Fonseca wrote a play about her experience, in partnership with artist and activist Julia Steele Allen, called Mariposa […]

Seven Days in Solitary [8/31/20]

Valerie Kiebala
ADX Florence Towers

• The Intercept published an article on the use of solitary confinement in response to the coronavirus in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities across the country. Oscar Perez Aguirre, held at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility in Colorado said after his hospitalization for the virus, when he was still so weak that he couldn’t stand, […]

Voices from Solitary: Fighting the Coronavirus in Prison with Transfers, Isolation, Threats, and Game Boys

Voices from Solitary

The following piece is written by Christopher Blackwell, a 39-year-old man incarcerated at Washington State Reformatory in the Monroe Correctional Complex (MCC), serving the last 23 years of a 45-year sentence. Blackwell was first incarcerated at the age of 11 and by the time he was 18-years-old, he faced 16 charges. Since then, he has […]