Last December, 71-year-old Ernie Stevens was called to the nurses’ station at San Quentin State Prison in California, where he was told that he would soon be transferred to another facility. “I was told that I’m high-risk medical and because I didn’t have Covid, they said they want to move me for my safety,” said […]
This article is published in partnership with the Crime Report.  When the pandemic started, many prisons and jails throughout the country responded by locking people down in their cells for 22 to 24 hours a day, and using solitary confinement cells as quarantine units. In some ways, these lockdown measures seemed like an intuitive response to […]
• 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, […]
• “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 […]
Christopher Blackwell, 40, is incarcerated at Washington State Reformatory in the Monroe Correctional Complex (MCC). First incarcerated at age 12, he is now about halfway through a 45-year sentence. Blackwell is a prolific writer who has had his work published by the Washington Post, HuffPost, Marshall Project, BuzzFeed, and Jewish Currents. He is currently working […]
• 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 […]
• According to a February 19 article from the Davis Vanguard, incarcerated individuals in the California Medical Facility are suffering from mental health problems due to a lockdown that was imposed in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, but has resulted in the solitary confinement of people with physical and mental health issues. • The […]
• Nonprofit organization Citizens for Prison Reform and the Open MI Door Campaign co-released a report called “Solitary: The Family Experience.” The report discusses the effects of solitary confinement on the families of individuals held in segregation by the Michigan Department of Corrections. The groups also provide recommendations for alternatives to solitary confinement. • Undark […]
The following piece is written by Juan Moreno Haines, an award-winning journalist incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. Haines is an editor at the San Quentin News, a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, a past recipient of a Solitary Confinement Reporting Project grant, and a Contributing Writer at Solitary Watch. Since the COVID-19 […]
• Brie Williams, Professor of Medicine at University of California San Francisco and director of the group AMEND, and UCSF medical school student Amanda Li wrote in the Public Health Post about a study their team conducted. The study found that “the prevalence of high blood pressure was 31% higher among those held in solitary confinement.” […]
• The Atlantic published the first article in what will be a five-part series by Solitary Watch’s Jean Casella, Katie Rose Quandt, and Sarah Shourd, on the epidemic of deaths in U.S. jails. The article, written by Shourd, tells the story of two families in California who called the police for help when their sons […]