First published in 2016 by The New Press, ​Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement​ is the first book to feature firsthand accounts—both writing and oral history—about the experience of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and detention centers. It includes pieces by 16 currently and formerly incarcerated men and women. This […]
Troy Hendrix, 38, is serving a life sentence at Attica Correctional Facility in New York State. Originally sentenced at 19 years old, he has spent the last 15 and a half years in solitary confinement. In the letter he wrote accompanying this piece, Hendrix reminisced about how Solitary Watch’s late founder and co-director, James Ridgeway, […]
In 2013, Solitary Watch published an essay called “A Sentence Worse Than Death” by William Blake, who wrote about his experience of living in solitary confinement for what was at that time more than 25 years. It received more than half a million hits on this site alone, and has been widely reprinted and translated into several […]
Over the years, we’ve often thought about something we heard from a man who had served more than 20 years, many of them in solitary confinement. He believed that most of the public held a common misconception about prisons. People looked at the wall around the perimeter of a prison, he said, and believed its purpose was to […]
Years ago, when we were down in Louisiana working on a story about the notorious plantation prison called Angola, a man who had served nearly 20 years shared with us what he thought to be a common misconception about prisons. He knew that most people looked at the wall around the perimeter of a prison, and […]
After spending nearly three decades in solitary confinement, William “Billy” Blake has learned a few things about staying sane. For Blake, who is serving a sentence of 77 years to life in conditions known to cause psychological breakdown, self-harm, and suicide, sanity is survival. He reads, he dreams, but most of the time, he writes. […]
UPDATE: Five Mualimm-ak and Jazz Hayden were both released on their own recognizance late Wednesday afternoon. Click here for video of their statements following release. Also see coverage and video of the arrests on Democracy Now! and Gothamist. Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more details as they emerge. . . . . . […]
• The Week published a piece on surviving solitary confinement. “Sitting across from Perez, you wonder how he feels in this space, a tiny, harshly lit conference room at the Urban Justice Center on Wall Street in Manhattan. Whether it brings back traumatic memories, or feels like home, or both.” • The Marshall Project posted a video […]
• Excerpts from “Hell is a Very Small Place” were featured on In These Times and Longreads. The book was also reviewed by incarcerated whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The book, which is edited by Solitary Watch’s Jean Casella, Jim Ridgeway and Sarah Shourd, is the first to feature firsthand accounts of life in solitary. • Taylor Pendergrass of the […]
UPDATE — UPCOMING BOOK EVENTS: After a standing-room-only launch at the Open Society Foundations in New York on March 15, we are planning several more book events/readings in the coming months. Stay tuned for future updates. Wednesday, April 13, 6-8 pm: Launch Event and Reading at Busboys & Poets, 14th and V Streets, Washington, DC. Click […]