• 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, […]
• Courthouse News Service reported that U.S. District Judge James Gwin ruled that confining people in what are officially general population cells for 23 hours a day does not violate the landmark 2015 settlement banning indefinite solitary confinement in California state prisons. While Samuel Miller, an attorney with Center for Constitutional Rights, argued that the […]
The following piece was written by Safi Dona’t, who is serving a 25-year sentence and is currently housed in the Control Unit at the United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado. Dona’t, a 57-year-old from Inglewood, California, has been incarcerated for 21 years and has spent over a decade in solitary confinement. […]
• Dozens of national articles have covered the dangerous effect COVID-19 has had—and threatens to have—on prisons, jails, and detention centers in the U.S., as well as the measures some jurisdictions are taking to deal with that danger. The Prison Policy Initiative has tracked some of the responses from state and local correctional facilities and compiled […]
• NBC4 reported that the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), a federal jail in New York City, was locked down for over a week while officials searched for a gun that had allegedly been smuggled into the jail by an officer. The gun was found late last Thursday in an individual’s cell, but the Chief of […]
• The Miami Herald reported that a lawsuit has been filed on behalf of 51-year-old Cheryl Weimar, claiming two male officers attacked the psychiatrically disabled woman held at Lowell Correctional Institution in Florida last August, leaving her paralyzed from the neck down. One of the alleged attackers, Ryan Dionne, remains on staff at the prison. […]
• The Hill published an opinion piece by Mark Levin, the Vice President of Criminal Justice Policy for the Right on Crime Initiative, recapping progress from prison administrators and legislators in the last few years that has restricted the use of solitary confinement. Levin cites Colorado as an example of success, after the state reduced […]
• The ACLU will host a briefing on Capitol Hill on legislation recently introduced by U.S. Representative Cedric Richmond (D-LA). HR4488, the Solitary Confinement Study and Reform Act of 2019, would establish national standards to limit the use of solitary in U.S. correctional facilities. The briefing will take place in Room 121, Cannon House Office Building, 27 Independence Ave SE, Washington, […]
• Katherine Hawkins, the Senior Legal Analyst for the Project on Government Oversight, testified on Thursday before the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security about the conditions in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities. Hawkins cited a 2017 report by the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties that found “shockingly high” stays in […]
• The Colorado Independent reported on the story of Sam Mandez, a 41-year-old man who was sentenced to life without parole under the state’s felony murder law for being the lookout at a robbery at which someone was killed. Mandez was fourteen years old at the time. Under the 2012 Supreme Court ruling that bars mandatory life […]
• The ACLU of Virginia announced that a lawsuit against the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) has moved forward, after Federal District Court Judge Robert Payne dismissed an attempt by the VDOC to dismiss the suit. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Nicolas Reyes, a Hispanic man who spent over twelve years in solitary confinement at Red […]