Clik here to view.
Solitary Confinement Cells Have Become America’s New Asylums
Our article “Locking Down the Mentally Ill” appeared last week on The Crime Report, the online publication of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College, City University of New York....
View ArticleTeen Kills Himself After Being Put in Solitary for…Trying to Kill Himself
CHILDREN IN LOCKDOWN Yesterday we wrote about a death row prisoner who was revived after an attempted suicide on the eve of his execution. Today, the grim absurdities continue, with the story of a...
View ArticleVoices From Solitary: Prison Staff Tried to Get Me to Betray a Friend Using...
The following account is written by Daniel Holland, who is serving a sentence of life without parole in Massachusetts at MCI Norfolk prison. After eight years of good behavior, he had earned the...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [4/8/18]
• The Brownsville Herald reported that Cameron County, Texas, has agreed to pay the family of Fernando Longoria $1 million after he died during a 10-day stay at the Carrizales-Rucker Detention Center...
View ArticleVoices from Solitary: A Concrete Death
Branton Noojin received an Honorable Mention for Nonfiction in PEN America’s 2018 Prison Writing Contest for authoring the following piece, “Solitary Confinement,” which is republished here by...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [10/14/18]
• Yale University’s Liman Center, in partnership with the Association of State Correctional Administrators, produced a report Reforming Restrictive Housing with data collected in 2017 of the number of...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [10/21/18]
• According to the LAist, incarcerated people at Orange County’s Theo Lacy Facility in California began a hunger strike this week in protest of the conditions at the jail, including the use of solitary...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [1/14/19]
• 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...
View ArticleVoices from Solitary: Death Would Feel So Much Better
The following piece was compiled from a series of letters written to Solitary Watch by Tashon Burke, a 26-year-old man who describes himself as having “mental health issues,” and who is serving time on...
View ArticleVoices from Solitary: On Suicide Watch
Ivan Denison is the pen name of a man currently held at Indiana State Prison (ISP), who has served 30 years of a 71-year sentence for attempted murder and resisting arrest. Three and a half of those...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [9/23/19]
• The Associated Press reported on recently released video footage that provides information about the death last year of 22-year-old Shali Tilson at the Rockdale County Jail in Georgia. The footage...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [11/4/19]
• According to the Crime Report, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) released a report last week that found an increase in the use of solitary confinement across the New York prison system. “The...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [11/18/19]
• Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) introduced a House Resolution that she calls “The People’s Justice Guarantee,” which lays out steps for a “humane and effective justice system,”“mass...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [12/2/19]
• KTVU Fox 2 TV in the Bay Area reported on the death of 29-year-old Edwin Villalta, who committed suicide at the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County in 2017 after being held in “Administrative...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [12/9/19]
• Mother Jones reported that a federal judge in California approved the class action status of a lawsuit filed against the private prison company GEO Group for its forced labor practices in Immigration...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [2/10/20]
• The Lancet Public Health Journal published the findings of a five-year study that examined the post-release effects of solitary confinement, by tracking nearly 14,000 people rotating through Danish...
View ArticleIn San Quentin, Getting the Flu Can Land You in Solitary Confinement
Incarcerated journalist Juan Moreno Haines is the Senior Editor of the San Quentin News. In 2017, Haines received the Silver Heart Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. This article was...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [4/6/20]
• The Huffington Post reported that Juan Mosquero, a 58-year-old law library clerk held at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, became the first person to die of COVID-19 in a New York State prison. The...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [4/20/20]
• The Washington Post reported that attorneys visited the DC jail unannounced last week under a court order to inspect the conditions and health care precautions being taken. Of the 1,442 people held...
View ArticleVoices from Solitary: Coronavirus Panic in a Quarantined Washington State Prison
John Hovey, a 52-year-old man serving three consecutive life sentences at Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington State, wrote the following piece in March 2020. Hovey has been incarcerated since the...
View ArticleFourteen Days in Solitary [6/8/20]
• The New York Daily News reported that prosecutors for the Bronx District Attorney will not pursue criminal charges related to the death of Layleen Polanco, a 27-year-old Afro-Latinx, transgender...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [6/15/20]
• According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, solitary confinement remains the only housing option for many incarcerated transgender people, unless they choose to stay in a general population of the...
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 ArticleClik here to view.
“I Hope Our Daughters Will Not Be Punished”
By Justine van der Leun Editor’s Note: This powerful article was published in June on the website of Dissent Magazine, and is reprinted in part on Solitary Watch with the permission of the author and...
View ArticleFourteen Days in Solitary [8/24/20]
• The Los Angeles Times published a piece on the work of 60-year-old Dolores Canales, who co-founded California Families Against Solitary Confinement in 2011. Canales is also a member of the Steering...
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 ArticleClik here to view.
Digging Our Way Out of the Hole: Keeping Prisons Safe Without Solitary...
By Jeremiah Bourgeois Jeremiah Bourgeois During his 27 years incarcerated in Washington State prisons, Jeremiah Bourgeois published several articles covering prison life and criminal justice reform,...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [1/18/20]
• 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...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [10/13/21]
• A Kaiser Health News report co-published with NPR details the trauma that survivors of solitary confinement carry with them years after their imprisonment. Pamela Winn, founder of nonprofit...
View ArticleSeven Days in Solitary [10/27/21]
• 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...
View Article
