• According to the LAist, incarcerated people at Orange County’s Theo Lacy Facility in California began a hunger strike this week in protest of the conditions at the jail, including the use of solitary confinement. Philip Sloan, currently awaiting trial at the jail, said, “We are protesting the overall treatment—or mistreatment—of inmates of all ethnic backgrounds. […]
In 2016, the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) announced it had significantly reduced its use of solitary confinement, particularly in the state’s two supermax facilities, Red Onion and Wallens Ridge. The reforms were welcome news: Five years earlier, the Washington Post reported that five percent of people in Virginia’s prisons were in solitary, including more […]
Red Onion State Prison, a supermax complex in the southwest corner of Virginia near the Kentucky border, has long had a reputation as one of the harshest prisons in the nation. So when in 2011 the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) announced it was initiating major reforms at Red Onion and nearby Wallens Ridge State Prison, […]