Dear Readers, Supporters, and Friends: For tens of thousands of people locked away in U.S. prisons and jails, the extreme deprivation and isolation of solitary confinement causes unimaginable suffering. One person living in solitary described his existence to us as “a soul-destroying loneliness that never ends.” In this context, even the smallest human connection can […]
Dear Readers, Supporters, Colleagues, and Friends: In recent weeks, we’ve written to you about the work we are doing at Solitary Watch to bring an end to the use of long-term solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails—a goal that, for the first time, actually seems possible, despite the distance we still have to go. Today, […]
• San Jose Inside reported on the settlement of the 2015 class action lawsuit Chavez v. County of Santa Clara, which challenged the use of solitary confinement at San Jose’s Main Jail as unconstitutional. The lawsuit alleged that many of those held at the Main Jail had not yet been convicted of the crime with which they […]
Dear Friends: Yesterday, we wrote about people living in solitary confinement who found the strength and courage to bring us news from inside a secret world of torment and abuse. We shared with you a few of their most powerful stories telling what it is like to live for years or decades deprived of all […]
About a year after our founding in 2009, when we realized that the shoestring project called Solitary Watch was something that desperately needed to be maintained and expanded over the long term, we also acknowledged a disconcerting truth: Our most important potential readership was also the one group of people who could not access our […]
As the year ends, we are republishing the following essay by Joseph Stanwick, who spent nearly two decades in solitary confinement in Texas prisons. “I’ve seen men cut on themselves with razor blades, go on hunger strikes for the most absurd reasons, beat on the walls and doors,” he wrote of his experiences there, “because solitary […]
Every year, hundreds of human beings in solitary confinement reach out to Solitary Watch through the old-fashioned practice of letter-writing. A while back, I wrote this piece about what it is like to correspond with people who live in solitary confinement. (It has since helped inspire coverage of our work by The New Yorker, WNYC’s “The Takeaway,” and Al Jazeera’s […]
Dear Friends: We reach out to you just once a year to ask for your support. And even now, we seek your help not for our regular research and reporting work, which catalyzes change by documenting the hidden world of prison isolation. Instead, we ask you to donate to a special program that brings small ray of […]
Dear Readers: We reach out to you just once a year to ask for your support. And even now, we seek your help not for our regular research and reporting work, which catalyzes change by documenting the hidden world of prison isolation. Instead, we ask you to donate to a special program that brings small ray of […]
Dear Readers: We reach out to you just once a year to ask for your support. And even now, we seek your help not for our regular research and reporting work, which catalyzes change by documenting the hidden world of prison isolation. Instead, we ask you to donate to a special program that brings small ray of […]
Dear Solitary Watchers: We reach out directly to our readers with an appeal for support once a year, and only for a very special part of our work. Throughout the year, while we carry out research and reporting on the human rights crisis hiding in plain sight, Solitary Watch also reaches out directly to over […]