This article is published in partnership with New York Focus. William “Billy” Blake, whose 2013 essay “A Sentence Worse Than Death” introduced hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide to the soul-crushing reality of life in long-term solitary confinement, has been transferred to the general prison population in New York. In a brief phone call, Blake […]
This article was published in partnership with The Appeal. Andrew Cuomo is at the weakest point of his nearly four-decade political career. Through a month of simultaneous scandals—including an alleged cover-up of COVID-19 nursing home deaths and numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assault of younger female aides—the New York governor has fallen from pandemic darling and 2024 presidential hopeful to an outcast within his own […]
In 2013, Solitary Watch published an essay called “A Sentence Worse Than Death” by William Blake, who wrote about his experience of living in solitary confinement for what was at that time more than 25 years. It received more than half a million hits on this site alone, and has been widely reprinted and translated into several […]
Imagine row after row of cell doors that rarely open and row after row of people trapped behind those doors, in small cells, day after day. Imagine having to hold most of your conversations by shouting through your cell door at voices whose faces you cannot see; imagine trying to sleep as a cacophony of […]
The following was written by Hector Matos, who is incarcerated in the New York State prison system on manslaughter and attempted assault convictions, and has spent long stretches of time in solitary confinement on various disciplinary charges. As he describes in his piece, he believes many of these charges are the result of his hearing […]
Solitary Watch’s James Ridgeway and Katie Rose Quandt have a new story out today in the Village Voice, about a young man with multiple psychological disabilities whose time in New York’s State prisons has included isolation, brutality–and a new six-year sentence for a suicide attempt. = = = = = = = = = = […]
After spending nearly three decades in solitary confinement, William “Billy” Blake has learned a few things about staying sane. For Blake, who is serving a sentence of 77 years to life in conditions known to cause psychological breakdown, self-harm, and suicide, sanity is survival. He reads, he dreams, but most of the time, he writes. […]
The Correctional Association of New York recently released Voices from Clinton, a report detailing the abuse and isolation many of the incarcerated people at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, face. (See accompanying post.)  The report follows how punishments and brutality at an already notoriously violent prison have become worse since an escape made by […]
One year after the high-profile escape of two men from Clinton Correctional Facility, the Correctional Association of New York, the state’s oldest prison reform organization, has released a scathing new report on the brutality that followed the escape. Voices from Clinton, documents cruelty often rising to the level of torture, and its subsequent cover up, in […]
Last Thursday, a federal judge gave formal approval to the settlement in a class-action suit brought by thousands of people held in solitary confinement in New York’s prisons, represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The ruling codifies an agreement reached in December, after extended negotiations, between the plaintiffs and the New York State […]
The settlement announced Wednesday by the New York Civil Liberties Union in the Peoples v Fischer case brings broad, deep, and meaningful change to the way New York utilizes solitary confinement in its state prisons. It is a significant and hard-won victory for the plaintiffs, their attorneys, and the hundreds of advocates who have long […]