On Monday, March 13, after a legal battle lasting nearly seven years, the last of the men known as the Dallas 6 had his day in court. Carrington Keys was one of six people–all of them men of color–who faced riot charges after protesting staff brutality in the Restricted Housing Unit (RHU) at SCI-Dallas, a […]
cell extraction
Seven Days in Solitary [8/3/2014]
The following roundup features noteworthy news, reports and opinions on solitary confinement from the past week that have not been covered in other Solitary Watch posts. • California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) introduced new policies that limit the use of force against prisoners with mental illness, including establishing strict restrictions on cell extractions from […]
Videos Show Brutal Treatment of Prisoners with Mental Illness
Recently obtained videos which have been exposed to the public show corrections officers using extreme force on incarcerated people suffering from various forms of mental illness. Attack on a Suicidal Man at Denver City Jail Footage of one such video (shown below), taken in September of last year and later obtained by The Colorado Independent through an […]
Video Shows Maine Prisoner with Mental Illness Brutally Subdued by Guards
A graphic video (shown below) recently leaked to the public shows a team of corrections officers make liberal use of prison torture tactics on a man who was, at the time of the incident,  incarcerated at Maine Correctional Center and had been held in solitary confinement for two months. A still of the explicit footage, originally […]
Voices from Solitary: "A Sort of Solitary Psychosis"
The following comes from an inmate at Utah State Prison, Draper’s Uinta 1 facility. Uinta 1 serves as Utah’s death row, long-term supermax, as well as the Draper institution’s disciplinary segregation unit. The writer wrote over a period of days detailing a particularly violent few days in his unit requiring multiple cell extractions following several […]
"A Time to Speak Up": Prisoner Freed After a Decade in Solitary Confinement in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania inmate Derrick Stanley has been released from prison after over 22 years of incarceration, more than half of which was served in solitary confinement. Stanley was among six inmates in State Correctional Institution-Dallas’s Restricted Housing Unit (RHU) charged with rioting after a peaceful protest against mistreatment of another inmate in April 2010. Stanley, who […]
Voices from Solitary: Welcome to Supermax
Pornchai Moontri was sent to Maine State Prison at the age of eighteen and has served the first 20 years of a 45-year sentence. Born in rural Thailand, he was brought to the United States at the age of eleven by his mother and American stepfather and endured years of abuse. His early life, as well […]
The Brutality of Supermax Confinement
Not to be missed by Solitary Watchers is a new article on supermax confinement published in the Boston Review. The piece is by Lance Tapley, known for his investigative reporting on the subject from Maine in the Portland Phoenix. This comprehensive piece, which deserves to be read in full, makes a strong case for identifying solitary confinement–and the […]
Abuse and Cover-Up in California Prisons' "Behavior Management Units"
The American prison system is rife with euphemistic acronyms for the places where inmates are held in solitary confinement: Our prisons contain SHUs, SMUs, ASUs, CCRs, and most recently CMUs.* Now, a powerful two-part expose by Charles Pillar in the Sacramento Bee shows what goes on inside the BMUs–the “Behavior Modification Units”–in several California prisons. These units are supposed to combine SHU-style isolation and deprivation […]