• The 2014 wrongful death case of 57-year-old James Embry has been revived, and WDRB News obtained a video showing Embry emaciated in the last moments of his life. Embry starved to death in solitary confinement, after refusing 35 out of his 36 last meals at the Kentucky State Penitentiary, where he had been sentenced […]
• The Boston Globe reported that individuals held at MCI-Norfolk in Massachusetts organized a hunger strike against the facility’s contaminated water last month. Wayland Coleman, an incarcerated man at MCI-Norfolk, acquired and distributed bottled water to others, and was subsequently placed in solitary confinement because officials claimed that the water was a valuable item that “could potentially […]
• A legislative commission in Rhode Island, tasked with studying the use of solitary confinement in the state, has reported back to lawmakers and made recommendations for reform. According to one local outlet, the Department of Corrections has already made some policy changes with regards to the number of phone calls permitted to people in the […]
• 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. […]
• Hawaii moved one step further towards passing a bill that would significantly restrict the use of prolonged solitary confinement at the state’s eight prisons and jails. According to the Honolulu Civil Beat, “under Senate Bill 603, the use of segregated confinement would be reserved only for inmates who are found guilty of ‘an offense involving […]
• A 32-year-old man held in solitary confinement at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correction Center has been on hunger strike for about two months. “When in in the SHU, a person is always cuffed outside the cell. They make us stand with our back to the door and place our hands through a slot before and after […]
• A Syracuse 16-year-old is suing the Onondaga County Justice Center for allegedly placing him in solitary confinement for more than two months. According to one local site, “Chief Onondaga County Custody Deputy Esteban Gonzalez called [the teenager’s housing conditions] ‘segregation housing’ in a response to the lawsuit, saying that the conditions “do not meet the […]
In the past few weeks we’ve seen two separate stories of prisoners who died alone in their cells, while their moans of pain and cries for help were ignored by prison staff. If this isn’t cruel and unusual punishment, it’s hard to see what would be. At the Onondaga County Justice Center in Upstate New York, 21-year-old […]