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Chicago Jail’s Quest to End Solitary Confinement Is a Work in Progress
We stood in the middle of the Cook County Jail’s Special Management Unit dayroom, its perimeter lined with cells. Five African American men sat on steel stools connected to small steel tables, each...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [1/13/20]
• The Associated Press reported that the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Mississippi NAACP, and the ACLU of Mississippi wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, calling for “immediate...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [1/20/20]
• NPR obtained the findings from a 2017 investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Adelanto...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [2/3/20]
• The Boston Globe reported that prison administrators locked down the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts, following an incident on January 10 when three correctional...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [3/2/20]
• The Montgomery Advertiser reported that the families of four men who committed suicide in Alabama prisons in the past two years have filed a wrongful death lawsuit, claiming they faced cruel and...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [3/9/20]
• NBC4 reported that the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), a federal jail in New York City, was locked down for over a week while officials searched for a gun that had allegedly been smuggled...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [3/16/20]
• ABC reported on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s announcement that in response to COVID-19, people incarcerated in the state’s prisons will be producing 100,000 gallons of hand sanitizer per week to...
View ArticleFourteen Days in Solitary [3/30/20]
• Dozens of national articles have covered the dangerous effect COVID-19 has had—and threatens to have—on prisons, jails, and detention centers in the U.S., as well as the measures some jurisdictions...
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Seven Days in Solitary [5/18/20]
• The Philadelphia Inquirer published the “Lockdown Diaries,” a set of writings from incarcerated people during Pennsylvania’s longest ever statewide lockdown. Instituted because of the coronavirus...
View ArticleFourteen Days in Solitary [7/6/20]
• NPR’s Joseph Shapiro produced a piece that ran on “All Things Considered” about the use of lockdowns and solitary confinement around the country in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The piece...
View ArticleFourteen Days in Solitary [7/20/20]
• The Cornell Chronicle published an article highlighting the findings of a study released in March, studying the affects of short stints in solitary confinement on a person’s experience once they are...
View ArticleVoices from Solitary: What Starts in ADX Stays in ADX
The following piece was written by Safi Dona’t, who is serving a 25-year sentence and is currently housed in the Control Unit at the United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in...
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Struggling to Survive at San Quentin: “We Are Dying in Here”
Editor’s Note: Juan Moreno Haines is an award-winning journalist incarcerated at San Quentin State prison and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. A past recipient of a Solitary...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [9/21/20]
• According to My Twin Tiers, five people held at the Allegheny County Jail filed a lawsuit through the Abolitionist Law Center (ALC) and the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, claiming that the...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [10/5/20]
• The Georgetown Law Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, along with 68 current and former prosecutors and U.S. Department of Justice officials, filed a brief to the U.S. Court of...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [10/12/20]
• According to the Washington Post, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Durbin sent two letters to U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Director Michael Carvajal:...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [10/26/20]
• The Durango Herald reported that a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Grants County, New Mexico claimed that county jail officials failed to properly monitor Fernando Rodriguez before he apparently...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [11/9/20]
• The ABA Journal reported that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that six prison officials at the John T. Montford Psychiatric Facility in Lubbock, Texas are not entitled to qualified immunity...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [11/16/20]
• The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a second wave of the coronavirus is hitting Pennsylvania prisons and jails, despite a statewide lockdown in March, keeping people locked in their cells for...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [11/30/20]
• The Arizona State Law Journal published an article written by law professor Laura Rovner and assistant professor Nicole Godfrey, entitled, “COVID-19 in American Prisons: Solitary Confinement is Not...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [12/7/20]
• The Intercept reported that a group of immigrants held at the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsen, Alabama banded together in July, all demanding coronavirus tests. But instead of providing...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [1/4/20]
• According to the Mercury News, 57-year-old Todd Ashker filed a complaint about the “torturous” conditions in solitary at Kern Valley State Prison. Ashker was the lead plaintiff in a 2016 landmark...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [1/11/20]
• 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...
View ArticleIn New York, Few Resources for Solitary Confinement Survivors After Prison
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...
View ArticleWill Biden Step Up on Solitary Confinement?
After a bold campaign promise, the president has remained almost silent as thousands languish in solitary in federal prisons. Advocates say they remain hopeful that he will find his voice on the...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [12/28/22]
New from Solitary Watch: • Director Jean Casella shares one of Solitary Watch’s first posts from 2009, “Santa Was in Solitary and Jesus Got the Death Penalty,” which tells us more about the two...
View ArticleThe Word: When Solitary Is Used to Silence
Yesterday, a three-week-long hunger strike by people in Texas prisons came to an end. The strikers were trying to draw attention to the use of solitary confinement in the state. At a time when there...
View ArticleVoices from Solitary: I Need to Be Alone
Tony D. Vick has served 28 years in prison on a double life-with-parole sentence in Tennessee. During that time, he was in solitary confinement on and off for three years. A prolific writer, Vick has...
View ArticleVoices from Solitary: On Hunger Strike in a Pennsylvania Prison
Dwayne “BIM” Staats is currently on his ninth day of a hunger strike at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Camp Hill, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Staats has been in solitary for about fourteen...
View ArticleVoices from Solitary: You Have to Be There
At 16 years old, Dillion Compton was tried and convicted as an adult, resulting in his placement in solitary confinement at a Texas jail as a child. Having described solitary as “a world of...
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