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"New York State Passes the Nation's Strongest Anti-Solitary Legislation
After a Decade of Activism, the HALT Solitary Confinement Act Is Signed into Law by an Embattled Governor Cuomo

By Veronica Riccobene | April 8, 2021

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William Blake

"Ready to Return to Humanity" After 34 Years in Solitary Confinement

March 29, 2021March 29, 2021 Voices from Solitary
ny solitary

In 2013, Solitary Watch published an essay called “A Sentence Worse Than Death” by William Blake, who wrote about his experience of living in solitary confinement for what was at that time more than 25 years. It received more than half a million hits on this site alone, and has been widely reprinted and translated into several […]

Three Unforgettable Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

November 27, 2018November 27, 2018 Jean Casella and James Ridgeway
Thomas Silverstein Art Banner Combo

Over the years, we’ve often thought about something we heard from a man who had served more than 20 years, many of them in solitary confinement. He believed that most of the public held a common misconception about prisons. People looked at the wall around the perimeter of a prison, he said, and believed its purpose was to […]

Five Unforgettable Stories From Inside Solitary Confinement

November 27, 2017November 12, 2018 Jean Casella and James Ridgeway
Thomas Silverstein Art Banner Combo

Years ago, when we were down in Louisiana working on a story about the notorious plantation prison called Angola, a man who had served nearly 20 years shared with us what he thought to be a common misconception about prisons. He knew that most people looked at the wall around the perimeter of a prison, and […]

Voices from Solitary: A Mouse and a Murderer

October 7, 2014August 21, 2017 Voices from Solitary
mouse

William Blake wrote this post while in solitary confinement at Elmira Correctional Facility in upstate New York. In 1987, while in county court on a drug charge, Blake, then 23, grabbed a gun from a sheriff’s deputy and, in a failed escape attempt, murdered one deputy and wounded another. He is now 50 years old, […]

Visiting Billy Blake After 25 Years in Solitary

March 23, 2013October 16, 2015 Jean Casella and James Ridgeway
elmira 3

On March 11, we published an essay entitled “A Sentence Worse Than Death” by William Blake, who has been held in solitary confinement in New York State prisons for close to 26 years. Since we posted the essay, it has received more than 150,000 hits on Solitary Watch alone–and many more, no doubt, on the […]