• According to the Trentonian, James Covington, a physically and mentally disabled man held at the Doylestown detention center in Pennsylvania for unpaid fines, claims that he suffered an unprovoked racist attack when three white corrections officers picked on him for his height, called him the N-word, assaulted him to the point of breaking his […]
• East Bay Express reported that as of Friday, October 20, 125 out of 412 individuals incarcerated in Glenn Dyer Jail in Oakland had entered their sixth day of a hunger strike. At the forefront of the demands is an end to indefinite solitary confinement. While the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson claims isolation is […]
• Social entrepreneur Marcus Bullock and writer Dwayne Betts, who both spent time in solitary confinement as kids, wrote about their experiences for The Hill. “The hole became a rite of passage. A cauldron meant to destroy. And of course, the loneliness that seeps into your bones does not leave — regardless of what follows.” […]
• A North Carolina man convicted of gang-related murders, and sentenced to eight life sentences, is enduring a heightened form of isolation after being placed on “Special Administrative Measures,” or SAMs, restrictions on his conditions of incarceration that are usually reserved for accused terrorists. Jamell Cureton is one of only 48 people in Bureau of […]
• Last April, dozens of immigrant detainees went on hunger strike at a privately-run Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Georgia, prompting staff to lock them up in solitary confinement. Spencer Woodman reported the story for the Verge. • GQ published an in-depth look into solitary confinement. “It is brutal. It is torture by definition. […]
• Venida Browder has died due to complications from a heart attack. Her son, Kalief, committed suicide about 16 months ago after spending several years in solitary confinement on Rikers Island. • An assistant professor at University of California Irvine, Keramet Reiter, penned an op-ed for the LA Times about how to fix solitary confinement […]
• The Delaware Supreme Court has reversed a previous ruling, in a decision that will land a person who was formally on death row, back in solitary confinement. Isaiah McCoy, 28, is awaiting a new trial after the Supreme Court overturned his convicrion. McCoy’s lawyers had successfully argued in front of a lower court that […]
• The isolation of transgender women has been in the media since Netflix released its fifth season of Orange is the New Black, including with high-profile interviews on the issue by Laverne Cox and CeCe McDonald. To learn more about the experiences of transgender women in solitary confinement, read an August 2014 Solitary Watch investigation about […]
Update, 5 pm: Based on court records, Wisconsin Watch is reporting that three men are now being force-fed as the hunger strike enters its third week. They include LaRon McKinley Bey and Cesar De Leon at Waupun Correctional Institution and Prince Aturn-Ra Uhuru Mutawakki/Norman C. Green at Columbia Correctional Institution, who has been in isolation for eighteen […]
• The Pioneer Institute released a report calling on Massachusetts to reform the use of solitary confinement in the state’s prisons and jails, as well as shift oversight at Bridgewater State Hospital, the only hospital in the country currently run by a corrections department. “Promoting serious reform to solitary confinement will send a message that […]
• Rhode Island’s House Judiciary Committee was scheduled to consider legislation that would create a commission to study the use of solitary confinement in the state’s prisons. Representative Aaron Regunberg, who is sponsoring the legislation, had previously proposed a bill that would limit the use of isolation to 15 days. • A British man has […]
California’s historic settlement ending the use of indefinite solitary confinement in the state prison system is now official. On January 26, U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken approved the settlement agreement reached between California prison officials and lawyers for individuals who had spent more than ten years in solitary confinement in the prison system’s Security Housing […]