• KOB4 reported that Keith Kosirog and Adonus Encinias, two men held in solitary confinement at the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas, committed suicide last Sunday. Albuquerque attorney Matt Coyte, who has represented individuals held in solitary, noted that evidence showed Kosirog had a psychiatric disability. Coyte expressed disappointment that Gov. Susana Martinez had vetoed […]
• The Delaware Supreme Court has reversed a previous ruling, in a decision that will land a person who was formally on death row, back in solitary confinement. Isaiah McCoy, 28, is awaiting a new trial after the Supreme Court overturned his convicrion. McCoy’s lawyers had successfully argued in front of a lower court that […]
For 13 of his 22 years in prison, Cero Smith spent 23 hours a day alone in a small concrete cell. Three times a day, a corrections officer would pass his meals through a slot in the solid steel cell door. A CO would also take him to exercise alone for one hour in a […]
• The Colorado Department of Corrections will spend more than $4.7 million to build an outdoor recreation area at the state’s highest security prison, Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP). The move is a result of a lawsuit settlement alleging that the conditions of confinement at CSP were unconstitutional. • Those in attendance at a legislative hearing in Alaska […]
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. • Federal investigators have determined that the state of Pennsylvania violated both the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment and the American with Disabilities Act, by placing people with […]
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. • A high-profile hearing on solitary confinement will be held on Tuesday, February 25, by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, chaired by […]
Records kept by the Colorado Department of Corrections show 61 instances from March 1, 2012 to March 1 of this year of corrections officers using force on men held at the Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP), where prisoners are held in administrative segregation on lockdown for 23 hours a day. The “use of force” log, obtained by Denver’s Westword, […]
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. • Media coverage on the urgency of closing Guantanamo was heavy throughout the past week, with an estimated 100 of the 166 detainees hunger striking. Most recently, Al Jazeera […]
A new report on solitary confinement in Colorado’s state prisons concluded that there are far too many inmates in round-the-clock lockdown. A series of relatively modest changes in its classification, review, and mental health treatment practices would “significantly reduce” the number of prisoners in administrative segregation, the report found. The report was funded by the National Institute of Corrections, and […]
For seven years, Clair L. Beazer has been an inmate in the supermax Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City–which, as we’ve written before, qualifies as the solitary confinement capital of the Western World. In this essay, Beazer describes the effects of years of solitary confinement, pointing out that while it is particularly torturous for inmates already suffering from mental illness, this “interminable, […]
In Colorado, one of the nation’s solitary confinement capitals, state legislators recently brought hope to prisoners and their families and advocates by introducing a bill mean to limit the use of solitary. Now, that bill has been revised in committee, in favor of what the Associated Press bluntly described as “watered-down measures”: Colorado lawmakers have backed […]
In another example of solitary confinement as a tool of retaliation in the prison system, a Colorado inmate claims that he was put in solitary for nearly a year because he refused to provide false testimony in a capital prison murder case. He is now suing prison officials in federal court. This story comes from Alan Prendergast, who reports […]