• Christopher Blackwell, incarcerated journalist, and Jessica Sandoval, director of the Unlock the Box national campaign to end solitary confinement, published an commentary in Inquest outlining how solitary confinement dehumanizes and traumatizes people. Blackwell and Sandoval write, “A dirty secret of solitary confinement is that it’s not generally used in response to the most dangerous behaviors, […]
• Health and Justice published an research study which analyzed the results of solitary confinement policy changes in the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, seeking to fill a gap in knowledge about “exactly how various [solitary confinement] reforms have actually impacted the lives of people living and working in the prisons where these reforms […]
• Episode 235 of the Hard Luck Show podcast illustrates the history of solitary confinement and gang affiliation, centering voices from Unlock the Box; California Families To Abolish Solitary Confinement; University of California, Irvine Law School; Criminology, Law and Society Professor Keramet Reiter; and Legal Coordinator & Youth Mentor Michael Saavedra. The podcast is intended to […]
• A study conducted in 2017 concluded that recent incrementalist reforms in Washington state prisons’ Intensive Management Units, where people are held for 22 hours a day in isolation, failed to alleviate the suffering of solitary confinement. In this study, published in the journal Health Justice, interviewers spoke with 183 people, both incarcerated people and staff, […]
• Although the Virginia Department of Corrections claims to be shifting their solitary confinement practice to “restorative housing,” the Virginia Coalition on Solitary Confinement and ACLU of Virginia maintain that many people are still held in isolation for 20 hours a day, the Progress-Index reports. Coalition organizer Natasha White said, “[VDOC] can claim they’ve ended solitary […]
• Corrections departments across the country have found ways to circumvent recent anti-solitary confinement legislation by simply renaming the cages that people are held in, the Progressive reports. Unlock the Box director Jessica Sandoval described how it was common for facilities to trade new names in for “solitary confinement,” like “special management unit” or “special housing […]
• A new report found that at least 786 people died in Louisiana’s jails and prisons between 2015 and 2019. The report is the result of research conducted by Andrea Armstrong of Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and a team of law students as part of the Death Behind Bars in Louisiana project, […]
• “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this isn’t just a place where people do time—it’s a place where people go to be broken.” A blog post on the website of Arnold Ventures provides an in-depth look at solitary confinement, the way it affects incarcerated people, their families, and correctional officers, and recent reforms […]
• “Silenced: Voices From Solitary in Michigan” is a new, interactive, searchable, and growing digital archive of over 100 letters from solitary in Michigan. Conceived by the group Zealous, it was produced with local partners in the state, as well as a range artists, designers, and coders, to raise awareness about the torture of solitary confinement […]
• Ian Manuel was sentenced to life without parole for a crime committed at age 13, and spent nearly two decades in solitary confinement. Freed five years ago through the efforts of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative, Manual wrote about this experience in his new memoir, My Time Will Come: A Memoir of […]
• Brian Nelson spent 23 years of his 28-year sentence in solitary confinement, many of them in the notorious Tamms supermax state prison in Illinois, which has since been closed. After his release, Nelson dedicated himself to advocating for the rights of people in prison through his work with the Uptown People’s Law Center in […]