Women in Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) are reporting being held in Administrative Segregation (Ad Seg) for over three months, following the closure of Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW) for use as a male facility. CCWF, which is located just down the road from the former VSPW, is now one of three female facilities […]
The following was written by Troy Hendrix, who is currently serving a life sentence at Elmira Correctional Facility, a maximum security facility located in south central New York State. For the last seven years, Hendrix, 29, has been held in administrative segregation, meaning that he’s in solitary confinement indefinitely. In this powerful piece, Hendrix asks readers […]
Shawn Fisher, who is serving a life sentence at Massachusetts Correctional Institution–Shirley, has written to Solitary Watch making the argument that the treatment of many elders in prison is in fact a form of solitary confinement. An organization of lifers in Massachusetts has urged the state legislature to adopt some sort of compassionate leave act that would […]
Guest Post by Kanya D’Almeida and Bret Grote “Control unit facilities cannot be allowed to exist,” writes Russell Maroon Shoatz in a piece called “Death by Regulation.” “They serve no purpose other than to dehumanize their occupants. Our collective welfare demands that we do everything within our power to bring about an end to this […]
The following roundup features noteworthy news, reports, and opinions on solitary confinement from the past week that have not been covered in other Solitary Watch posts. • According to a piece by Susan Greene in the Colorado Independent, the “Colorado ACLU reports young people are being forced to spend lengthy stints in cement isolation rooms referred […]
On March 11, we published an essay entitled “A Sentence Worse Than Death” by William Blake, who has been held in solitary confinement in New York State prisons for close to 26 years. Since we posted the essay, it has received more than 150,000 hits on Solitary Watch alone–and many more, no doubt, on the […]
The following essay is by William Blake. In 1987, Blake, then 23 and in county court on a drug charge, grabbed a gun from a sheriff’s deputy in a failed escape attempt, murdering one deputy and wounding another. He was sentenced to 77 years to life. The New York State prison system, classifying him as […]
Guest Post by Bret Grote Click here to listen to an interview on Paul Rogers with advocate Lois Ahrens and sister Kharla Rogers. Paul Rogers has spent more than 4,300 consecutive days – over 12 years – locked behind a solid steel door in the bowels of a Pennsylvania prison. He spends twenty-four hours a day […]
J. has been incarcerated for 12 years, the last eight of which have been in solitary confinement. Initially convicted of robbery and sentenced to a five year term as a juvenile, he was returned to prison in Mississippi on a parole violation. He was caught drinking beer at a beach. Admitting that he was “at war […]
The title of this post is the title of a new article by James Ridgeway that appears on Mother Jones and New American Media. It begins this way: William “Lefty” Gilday had been in prison 40 years when the dementia began to set in. At 82, he was already suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease and […]
Guest Post by Bret Grote In a story that has received scant attention so far, former death row occupant, political prisoner, and world-renowned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal filed a legal challenge to the imposition of a sentence of life without parole. Mumia is basing his case, in part, on the idea that his thirty years in solitary confinement […]