This article was published in collaboration with Truthout. Anthony Gay entered prison at age 19 with a sentence of seven years. The punishment seemed harsh enough for a weaponless robbery of a hat and a single dollar. But for Gay, the seven years would turn into 97, based entirely on his behavior in prison—despite the […]
• The Nation published an article exposing the force-feeding conducted by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on the H Unit at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado. Through several extensive interviews with men formerly held on the unit, author Aviva Stahl found that the men—many of whom were Muslims and had […]
• As reported by the Baton Rouge Advocate, the Vera Institute of Justice’s Safe Alternatives to Segregation Initiative last week released its report on Louisiana’s use of solitary confinement last week. The report, based on two years of research by Vera in cooperation with the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (LADOC), found more than 17 percent […]
• KSBY reported that the family of Russell Hammer, a 62-year old man who died in the custody of California’s San Luis Obispo Jail in 2017, filed a lawsuit claiming Hammer “was placed in solitary confinement, neglected and left to eat his own feces.” The lawsuit asserts the jail has historically denied medical and mental […]
• The New York Times reported that New York City settled the civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Kalief Browder, and agreed to pay $3.3 million. Browder, arrested for stealing a backpack when he was 16 years old, committed suicide after being released from nearly three years on Rikers Island, […]
• The Charlotte Observer reported that the new sheriff of North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County, Garry McFadden, has formally closed the disciplinary detention unit at the county jail, which used to hold teenagers in solitary for 23 hours a day and deny them access to phone calls, visitors, books, and classes. McFadden explained his reasoning for […]
In the United States, being locked away in long-term solitary confinement is arguably the worst thing that can legally be done to a human being, short of the death penalty. Solitary’s deeply harmful effects on emotional, psychological, and physical well-being are now so well-documented as to be irrefutable, and a growing international consensus equates the […]
• San Jose Inside reported on the settlement of the 2015 class action lawsuit Chavez v. County of Santa Clara, which challenged the use of solitary confinement at San Jose’s Main Jail as unconstitutional. The lawsuit alleged that many of those held at the Main Jail had not yet been convicted of the crime with which they […]
• 39-year-old Marco Antonio Muñoz, a Honduran husband and father, committed suicide last month in a solitary confinement cell, after Border Patrol agents took away his three-year-old son. Muñoz and his family were applying for asylum at the border when they were informed that the family would be separated. An agent recalled, in a Washington Post article, […]
• The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed a lawsuit this week against the forced labor practices of private prison company CoreCivic, which runs Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities including the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia. The lawsuit claims that CoreCivic’s “Dollar-a-Day” program pays immigrants nearly nothing to carry out duties that in other […]
• The Charlotte Observer reported that 39-year-old Kenneth Wayne Bigham committed suicide only days after being placed in solitary confinement at Mecklenburg County Jail in North Carolina, where no visitors, phone calls, or books are allowed, with the exception of religious material. A spokesperson for the NC ACLU said, “This tragedy is a terrible reminder […]