Dear Readers, Supporters, Colleagues, and Friends: This second pandemic year has been a difficult one for just about everyone, with political and environmental maelstroms on top of a public health crisis. Like hundreds of thousands of people around the world, all of us at Solitary Watch have also contended with an overwhelming private loss with […]
Henry Messenger is a writer incarcerated at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in New York. He has spent 35 years in prison, and is currently serving a five-year sentence for larceny. Messenger says he has dedicated himself to self-education, and he has written for Truthout as well as several prison newspapers. In this open letter, he […]
Dear Readers, Supporters, Colleagues, and Friends: We started Solitary Watch, twelve years ago this month, simply because we felt we had no other choice. Through our reporting on the case of the Angola 3 for Mother Jones, Jim Ridgeway and I had learned about the best-kept secret of the U.S. criminal justice system: In prisons and jails […]
n excerpt of the conversation, which has been edited for clarity and length. This interview was published in partnership with The Appeal.
The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola holds more than 6,000 men, three-quarters of whom are Black, in an area larger than Manhattan. Angola, which takes its name from the slave plantation that once occupied the site, is a place synonymous with draconian sentences and nightmarish conditions. But even here, a special level of dread has […]
Dear Donors, Readers, and Friends: We are approaching the end of what has been a difficult year for all of us at Solitary Watch. In February, we suffered a devastating internal loss with the sudden passing of James Ridgeway, our founder and co-director. A few of you were fortunate enough to know Jim personally. Anyone […]
• According to a February 19 article from the Davis Vanguard, incarcerated individuals in the California Medical Facility are suffering from mental health problems due to a lockdown that was imposed in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, but has resulted in the solitary confinement of people with physical and mental health issues. • The […]
The following is a brief excerpt from an article published in City Limits, tracing the struggle of returning to society in New York City with sparse resources to heal the layers of trauma accumulated through years in solitary confinement in New York state prisons. The article was written by Roshan Abraham with the support of a grant from […]
This exposé of abusive practices at the ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, was written by Renée Feltz, who received a grant from the Solitary Confinement Reporting Project, administered by Solitary Watch with funding from the Vital Projects Fund. Feltz is the Co-Director of Democracy Now! News and an award-winning investigative journalist who has covered criminal justice and […]
• The Associated Press reported that all federal prisons have been locked down in anticipation of the potentially violent protests that could erupt across the country on the inauguration day of Joe Biden. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has reportedly begun to move some of its Special Operations Response Team (SORT) from federal prisons to […]
• The Washington Post reported that British District Judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States, based on the high risk of suicide and self-harm he would face imprisoned in the U.S. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, struggles with mental illness and is currently held in a British prison. Citing […]