• The Tacoma News Tribune reported that immigrants detained at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Tacoma, Washington, have engaged in hunger strikes to protest separation from their children, inhumane conditions at the facility, and a forced labor program, among other concerns. Two of the hunger strikers, one of […]
• A lawsuit filed on behalf of Nicolas Reyes, a man from El Salvador serving a 47-year sentence at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia, claims that he has been held in solitary confinement solely based on his inability to complete a journal writing requirement for the step-down program because he does not speak or […]
• 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 new film Cruel and Unusual is the story of the Angola 3—Robert King, Herman Wallace, and Albert Woodfox, who collectively endured more than 100 years in solitary confinement in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola (and whose story helped inspire us to launch Solitary Watch eight years ago). The feature-length documentary tells a story of […]
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 […]
• Disability Rights Oregon released a report this week documenting the psychological harm children face at Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facility (NORCOR) in The Dalles, east of Portland. Young people at the juvenile detention facility are held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods of time without human contact and without the ability to read, write, […]
• One of the Angola 3, Albert Woodfox, who served the longest stretch in solitary confinement documented in the United States of 43 years and 10 months, discussed on Love + Radio his experience as a Black man in society, in the Louisiana prison system, and in solitary: “The thing about pain is it’s always fresh. No matter […]
• In the Burlington Free Press, Vermont’s Secretary of Human Services Al Gobeille claimed the state is in a “mental health crisis,” as it keeps running out of beds for those in urgent need of inpatient psychiatric treatment once they have entered the criminal justice system. For those awaiting the opening of a bed, the […]
• The Vera Institute released a new report about the use of solitary confinement in Oregon. Key findings from the report included: that “disciplinary segregation is overused, overly long, and characterized by isolating conditions,” that “stays in administrative segregation can be long, isolating and unproductive,” and that “people of color and people with mental health […]
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. • The Advocate continued its coverage of the case of Ky Peterson, a 23-year-old trans man held in solitary confinement in an all-female facility in Georgia. Meanwhile, a 22-year-old trans […]
Guest Post by Margo Schlanger Margo Schlanger is Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. The following post is based on an article that appeared in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law (see link below). The article was presented as introduction to a symposium held at the University of Michigan Law School […]