• Mother Jones reported that a federal judge in California approved the class action status of a lawsuit filed against the private prison company GEO Group for its forced labor practices in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities across the country. The lawsuit challenges the company’s Housing Unit Sanitation Policy that requires detained people […]
• The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections agreed to a settlement with the Abolitionist Law Center (ALC) and the ACLU of Pennsylvania last week that will end indefinite solitary confinement for people held on death row in the state. The 136 people with death sentences will now have over 42 hours […]
• According to the Hartford Courant, Judge Stefan Underhill has called the conditions “unconstitutional” for people held on Connecticut’s death row. While Connecticut has abolished capital punishment, a “compromise law” passed in 2012 mandated that in the absence of the death penalty, those sentenced to death must be held in solitary confinement for the rest of […]
• A groundbreaking and disturbing new study published by the JAMA Network found that people held in solitary confinement during their incarceration had a “significantly” higher likelihood of dying within the first year of their release back into the community. The study used data from the North Carolina Department of Public Safety tracking nearly 230,000 incarcerated people […]
• 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 following account was written by Billy Joel Tracy, who has spent nearly nineteen years in solitary confinement in various Texas prisons, including one stint of thirteen straight years in isolation. Tracy, a 41-year-old man with a psychiatric disability, has been incarcerated for 21 years in total, and received a death sentence for the murder of a prison […]
• According to the Associated Press, NBC news anchor Lestor Holt spent two nights in a cell at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, to report on criminal justice reform. Holt stayed in the prison’s death row unit, where people are isolated in their cells for 23 hours a day. The man housed next to Holt had […]
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that U.S. District Court Judge Billy Ray issued an injunction for Fulton County, Georgia, to release mentally ill women from solitary confinement within 30 days. The Georgia Advocacy Office filed a lawsuit on behalf of 30 to 40 women held at South Fulton Municipal Regional Jail in April, presenting evidence that […]
• The Sacramento Bee published recently released footage from 2017 of corrections officers brutally assaulting a man with psychiatric disabilities, while he was being held in a suicide watch cell at the Auburn Main Jail in Placer County, California. The video, which officials initially withheld from the public, at one point shows eight officers piled on […]
• Gothamist published an article noting that thousands of people spent the holidays in isolation in New York’s state prisons, where 2,500 adults are currently held in Special Housing Units (SHU) and about 1,000 others are held in another form of solitary called keeplock. Victor Pate, a formerly incarcerated advocate who was once held in solitary at […]
• The East Bay Times reported that a federal class-action lawsuit filed Friday claims two jails in Alameda County, California, violate the constitutional rights of the individuals held there through the use of “safety cells.” These cells are used for people who express suicidal thoughts, who are stripped naked, given a smock, and isolated without […]