• The New York Times reported that New York City settled the civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Kalief Browder, and agreed to pay $3.3 million. Browder, arrested for stealing a backpack when he was 16 years old, committed suicide after being released from nearly three years on Rikers Island, […]
• The Denver-based weekly Westword published an article exposing the conditions within the isolated H Unit at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, where many of the men convicted of high-profile terrorism-related offenses are subjected to Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs. The author, Alan Prendergast, delves into the stories of several different men […]
• The new film Cruel and Unusual is the story of the Angola 3—Robert King, Herman Wallace, and Albert Woodfox, who collectively endured more than 100 years in solitary confinement in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola (and whose story helped inspire us to launch Solitary Watch eight years ago). The feature-length documentary tells a story of […]
• A federal lawsuit was filed on behalf of six women against Alameda County, the Alameda County Sheriff’s office, and individual deputies for the alleged “barbaric” and “inhumane” treatment of pregnant women held at the Santa Rita Jail in California. According to the East Bay Times, the lawsuit claims that one woman was misdiagnosed with […]
• Seth Ferranti, who reported on prison conditions while he was incarcerated in Bureau of Prisons custody, penned a piece for the Huffington Post about the time he was thrown in solitary, then transferred to a Communication Management Unit (CMU) for writing articles critical of the BOP. People locked up in the BOP’s two CMUs […]
• 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.” […]
• 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. […]
• Filmmaker James Burns voluntarily entered solitary confinement in the La Paz County Jail in Parker, Arizona. Every moment of his 30 days in the hole will be livestreamed here. • New York City’s Correction Officers’ Union announced it would be suing the city to block a new policy that would prohibit people from being […]
• 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 […]
• Vice News spoke to prison strike organizer Bennu Hannibal from his solitary confinement cell at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Alabama. The action, which started on September 9th, is said to involve over 24,000 people and constitute the biggest prison strike in the nation’s history. • A grandmother is suing the Utah […]
• On the Marshall Project, Andrew Cohen explores the ongoing lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and its reform-minded secretary, John Wetzel. Lawyers for Arthur Johnson, an incarcerated man with intellectual disabilities who has spent the last 36 years in solitary confinement in the state’s prisons, allege that Johnson’s conditions of confinement violate the […]