• Health and Justice published an research study which analyzed the results of solitary confinement policy changes in the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, seeking to fill a gap in knowledge about “exactly how various [solitary confinement] reforms have actually impacted the lives of people living and working in the prisons where these reforms […]
• Episode 235 of the Hard Luck Show podcast illustrates the history of solitary confinement and gang affiliation, centering voices from Unlock the Box; California Families To Abolish Solitary Confinement; University of California, Irvine Law School; Criminology, Law and Society Professor Keramet Reiter; and Legal Coordinator & Youth Mentor Michael Saavedra. The podcast is intended to […]
• Jessica Schulberg from The Huffington Post and incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell interviewed dozens of people from across the country of the hundreds of thousands who were put in solitary confinement as a COVID prevention tactic. “Even under regular conditions, solitary confinement is a dehumanizing, tortuous form of punishment that often leads to depression, anxiety, paranoia, […]
• A Time Magazine retrospective reflects on prison conditions 50 years after the Attica Correctional Facility uprising. Heather Ann Thompson, author of the prize-winning book on Attica, Blood in the Water, writes that back in 1971, ending solitary confinement was high on the uprising’s list of demands. Thompson describes that although the uprising’s stated intentions were […]
A New Yorker article by Eyal Press looks at the work of Angela Armstrong, who has spent the past decade examining conditions inside of carceral facilities in Louisiana. This past June, she launched a revolutionary database compiling death statistics for Louisiana prisons and jails, attempting to improve transparency. Armstrong’s database reports on individuals moved to […]
• A study conducted in 2017 concluded that recent incrementalist reforms in Washington state prisons’ Intensive Management Units, where people are held for 22 hours a day in isolation, failed to alleviate the suffering of solitary confinement. In this study, published in the journal Health Justice, interviewers spoke with 183 people, both incarcerated people and staff, […]
• Although the Virginia Department of Corrections claims to be shifting their solitary confinement practice to “restorative housing,” the Virginia Coalition on Solitary Confinement and ACLU of Virginia maintain that many people are still held in isolation for 20 hours a day, the Progress-Index reports. Coalition organizer Natasha White said, “[VDOC] can claim they’ve ended solitary […]
• A hunger strike by more than 20 incarcerated men in Pennsylvania prisons over prolonged solitary confinement came to an end after ten days on July 6, reports the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. The strikers are held in the Intensive Management Unit (IMU) at State Correctional Institution-Phoenix, which they allege is de facto solitary confinement. They declared […]
• “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this isn’t just a place where people do time—it’s a place where people go to be broken.” A blog post on the website of Arnold Ventures provides an in-depth look at solitary confinement, the way it affects incarcerated people, their families, and correctional officers, and recent reforms […]
• Ian Manuel was sentenced to life without parole for a crime committed at age 13, and spent nearly two decades in solitary confinement. Freed five years ago through the efforts of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative, Manual wrote about this experience in his new memoir, My Time Will Come: A Memoir of […]
• Nonprofit organization Citizens for Prison Reform and the Open MI Door Campaign co-released a report called “Solitary: The Family Experience.” The report discusses the effects of solitary confinement on the families of individuals held in segregation by the Michigan Department of Corrections. The groups also provide recommendations for alternatives to solitary confinement. • Undark […]