• Jailhouse lawyer Mark Wilson has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Oregon State Correctional Institution, alleging that when he was put in solitary confinement for 120 days for having an illegal item of contraband, the punishment was really in retaliation for his legal work. The contraband in question was a toy phone for […]
• 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 […]
• Jessica Schulberg from The Huffington Post and incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell interviewed dozens of people from across the country of the hundreds of thousands who were put in solitary confinement as a COVID prevention tactic. “Even under regular conditions, solitary confinement is a dehumanizing, tortuous form of punishment that often leads to depression, anxiety, paranoia, […]
• A new federal lawsuit alleges that men held in solitary confinement in Georgia State Prison are dangerously deprived of adequate mental healthcare, reports News Channel 9. Filed on September 10, the proposed class-action lawsuit seeks “to stop prison officials from isolating people in deplorable conditions.” In the last two years, at least 12 people in […]
Ronald Clark, 53, is currently held on Florida’s Death Row at Union Correctional Institution in Railford. Death-sentenced individuals held by the Florida Department of Corrections are confined in a 63-square-foot cell for upwards of 23 hours a day, and subjected to additional isolation for disciplinary infractions. On his blog The Death Row Poet, Clark writes […]
• “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 […]
• 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 […]
The following piece was written by Chez-Armand Blackwell, who is currently serving a fifteen-year sentence for burglary at the Florida State Prison in Raiford. Blackwell has spent the past twelve years in solitary confinement, in what the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) calls Close Management. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed a […]
• A US District Judge ordered the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) to “stop retaliation and threats of retaliation against incarcerated people” for participating in a lawsuit regarding the department’s use of solitary confinement. The ongoing lawsuit, which was filed in 2019 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Florida Legal Services, and the Florida Justice Institute, […]
• The Associated Press reported that all federal prisons have been locked down in anticipation of the potentially violent protests that could erupt across the country on the inauguration day of Joe Biden. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has reportedly begun to move some of its Special Operations Response Team (SORT) from federal prisons to […]
• USA Today published an opinion piece by solitary survivors Johnny Perez, Jack Morris, and Pamela Winn, all of whom now advocate for the rights of incarcerated people. All three recounted their own experiences being trapped in prison for the holidays. Perez, the director of the U.S. Prisons Program at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, […]