John Hovey, a 54-year-old man who has been incarcerated since the age of sixteen, and is currently serving a life sentences at Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington State, wrote the following piece in March 2021. He describes his experience of solitary confinement as “quarantine” during the COVID-19 pandemic. His entire unit was moved to the […]
• An ACLU press release condemns the use of solitary confinement in ICE detention, citing a recently published report from the Department of Homeland Security on the lack of oversight and transparency for isolation policies in ICE facilities nationwide. The ACLU outlines how ICE frequently fails to document its use of solitary, and fails to follow […]
• On September 30th, the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) claimed that it will end the use of disciplinary segregation as punishment in prisons after determining that most individuals moved to solitary were there for nonviolent offenses, reports the Seattle Times. Although in the DOC Secretary’s statement she justified the policy change saying, “the science […]
• On September 10th, National Suicide Prevention Day, Unlock The Box will be held a vigil on Twitter to “to honor those ”who died by suicide both in and out of solitary confinement.” Unlock the Box invited people to fill out a form so that loved ones could be recognized and honored, and provided this link […]
• 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, […]
Christopher Blackwell, 40, is serving a 45-year prison sentence in Washington State. He co-founded Look 2 Justice, an organization that provides civic education to system-impacted communities and actively works to pass sentencing and policy reform legislation. When the COVID pandemic hit his prison, he was on the same unit as Tim Pauley (who has given […]
Christopher Blackwell, 40, is incarcerated at Washington State Reformatory in the Monroe Correctional Complex (MCC). First incarcerated at age 12, he is now about halfway through a 45-year sentence. Blackwell is a prolific writer who has had his work published by the Washington Post, HuffPost, Marshall Project, BuzzFeed, and Jewish Currents. He is currently working […]
• Brian Nelson spent 23 years of his 28-year sentence in solitary confinement, many of them in the notorious Tamms supermax state prison in Illinois, which has since been closed. After his release, Nelson dedicated himself to advocating for the rights of people in prison through his work with the Uptown People’s Law Center in […]
• A US District Judge ordered the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) to “stop retaliation and threats of retaliation against incarcerated people” for participating in a lawsuit regarding the department’s use of solitary confinement. The ongoing lawsuit, which was filed in 2019 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Florida Legal Services, and the Florida Justice Institute, […]
This week, The New Republic published a long essay by Arthur Longworth, which was written with the support of a grant from the Solitary Confinement Reporting Project, managed by Solitary Watch with funding from the Vital Projects Fund. Longworth has been incarcerated for 35 years and has spent long stretches in solitary. He is a 2019–2020 PEN America Writing for […]
• The East Bay Times reported that a federal class-action lawsuit filed Friday claims two jails in Alameda County, California, violate the constitutional rights of the individuals held there through the use of “safety cells.” These cells are used for people who express suicidal thoughts, who are stripped naked, given a smock, and isolated without […]