Solitary Watch

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Seven Days in Solitary [9/13/22]

by Mirilla Zhu

September 14, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: • Solitary Watch has released a new fact sheet that documents the collateral consequences of solitary confinement. According to the fact sheet, these consequences include “the destruction of family relationships, lasting financial hardship, exclusion from work and educational programing, additional time behind bars, increased recidivism, and even shortened life […]

New Fact Sheet Documents the Collateral Consequences of Solitary Confinement

by Jean Casella

September 13, 2022

Today, Solitary Watch is publishing the second in a new series of fact sheets offering facts, analysis, and resources on a variety of topics related to solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and immigrant and juvenile facilities. This fact sheet, written by by Annalena Wolke, covers the seldom-addressed “collateral consequences” of solitary. As the fact […]

Seven Days in Solitary [9/07/22]

by Caitlin Konya

September 8, 2022

• An editorial in Tuesday’s Washington Post carries the headline: “Solitary confinement is torture. U.S. prisons should stop using it.” Citing solitary’s devastating psychological harms, the piece notes that progress in reducing solitary “is encouraging but piecemeal—and would benefit from federal leadership” from the White House. To date, the piece is the strongest statement against solitary […]

Voices from Solitary: Books Are a Spark in the Dark

by Voices from Solitary

September 6, 2022

As millions of students across the country return to school, we are republishing this piece on what books mean to people living in solitary confinement. It originally came to us via the Real Cost of Prisons Project, which maintains an outstanding collection of Writing from Prison. The author is Joseph Stanwick, who sadly, passed in a […]

Seven Days in Solitary [8/31/22]

by Mirilla Zhu

August 31, 2022

• The California state Senate has passed a bill banning the use of long-term solitary confinement in prisons, jails, and private detention centers, reports KTVU in Sacramento. Under the California Mandela Act, AB 2632 (named for the the UN’s Mandela Rules on the treatment of incarcerated persons), solitary confinement is limited to no more than […]

Seven Days in Solitary [8/24/22]

by Caitlin Konya

August 24, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: The KPFA radio show and podcast “Law and Disorder” featured a segment based on an article by Victoria Law published last week by Solitary Watch in partnership with The Nation. In the segment, Law talks about her piece, titled “These Labor Unions Are Fighting to Keep Solitary Confinement,” which […]

Seven Days in Solitary [8/17/22]

by Mirilla Zhu

August 17, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: • In an article co-published by Solitary Watch and The Nation, Victoria Law looks at how many correctional officers’ unions are pushing back against prison reforms, including new laws restricting the use of solitary confinement. She focuses on New York, where the state correctional officers’ union, NYSCOBA, has mounted […]

These Labor Unions Are Fighting to Keep Solitary Confinement

by Victoria Law

August 16, 2022

Photo: Alicia Barraza, whose 21-year-old son died by suicide while held in solitary confinement, speaks to other advocates gathered in the New York State Capitol in 2020 to lobby state legislators to pass the HALT Solitary Confinement Act. (Courtesy of the #HALTsolitary campaign.) This article is co-published with The Nation. On February 13, at Wende […]

Voices from Solitary: “As Real As It Honestly and Truthfully Gets”

by Voices from Solitary

August 12, 2022

The following essay was written by Edee Allynnah Davis, a 61-year-old trans woman previously incarcerated in the Clements Unit, a men’s maximum-security prison in Amarillo, Texas. She recounts her experience in the ‘Program for the Aggressive Mentally Ill Offender’ (PAMIO), a “step-down program” for people in administrative segregation, a form of solitary confinement. Though the […]

Seven Days in Solitary 8/10/22

by Roxanne Barnes and Jean Casella

August 11, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: •The latest in our series of monthly dispatches, The Word from Solitary Watch, explores depictions of solitary confinement and its myriad harms through film, theater, visual art, and writing. It features the newly released short film “Tuesday Afternoon,” selected as an “Op Doc” by the New York Times, which […]

The Word: The Art of Changing Hearts and Minds on Solitary Confinement

by Jean Casella

August 3, 2022

One week ago, the New York Timesfeatured as its weekly “Op Doc”ashort film called “Tuesday Afternoon,”directed by Pete Quandt and co-produced by Solitary Watch. It follows Jack Powers—who spent 33 years in federal prison for bank robbery—on his first day in the free world, traveling from a prison in Pennsylvania to a halfway house in […]

Fourteen Days in Solitary [8/3/21]

by Roxanne Barnes

August 3, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: • The Arkansas Department of Corrections has secured $75 million to add new 458 prison beds, partially funded through unused federal COVID-19 funds, reports Katie Rose Quandt. Anti-mass-incarceration organization DecARcerate insists, “when we no longer hold those too poor to buy their freedom, address the failure to appear in a […]

Arkansas to Add More Prison Beds Using Budget Surplus from Federal COVID Funds

by Katie Rose Quandt

July 27, 2022

After years of unsuccessful attempts to secure funding, the Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC) recently obtained the go-ahead to add more beds to the state’s prison system. In March, state lawmakers passed legislation dedicating $75 million to add 498 high-security beds to the North Central Unit, a men’s prison in Calico Rock. Advocates like those […]

“Immersive and Transformative” Play About Solitary Confinement Tours the Country

by Roxanne Barnes

July 21, 2022

The BOX is billed as an immersive and transformative theater experience that takes audiences inside a solitary confinement unit in a U.S. prison. The “End of Isolation Tour” is bringing the play to ten venues across the country this summer, with cast and crew traveling in a converted school bus. It is intended as “a […]

Seven Days in Solitary [7/20/22]

by Roxanne Barnes

July 20, 2022

• The Intercept reported on a complaint letter from four women in Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, who allege that a jail nurse sexually assaulted them and threatened them with retaliation for speaking out. The immigration detention center, which is run by CoreCivic, has a history of complaints and lawsuits for abuse, medical neglect, and […]

In Prison, the Work of Journalism Is Challenging but Essential

by Juan Moreno Haines

July 14, 2022

Solitary Watch Contributing Writer Juan Moreno Haines, who is also Senior Editor at the San Quentin News, published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times last week about the experience and the vital importance of being an incarcerated journalist. I am one of nearly 3,000 people in San Quentin State Prison who are paying for […]

Seven Days in Solitary

by Valentina Flores

July 14, 2022

•California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement is hosting the California Symposium to End Solitary Confinement on Sunday, July 17, from 10 am to 2 pm PT / 1 pm – 5 pm ET. Speakers include Solitary Watch’s Jean Casella, as well as representatives of Unlock the Box, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Disability Right […]

Seven Days in Solitary [7/6/22]

by Roxanne Barnes

July 6, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: • In the latest installment of The Word, a monthly dispatch from Solitary Watch, Juan Moreno Haines writes about the ongoing use of solitary confinement in San Quentin prison as a failed COVID-19 preventative measure. Haines describes how all programming has been severely curtailed since the epidemic began, and how […]

The Word: In Prison, We Face Epidemics of Isolation and Neglect on Top of COVID-19

by Juan Moreno Haines

June 30, 2022

This is the third in a new series of monthly dispatches from Solitary Watch. COVID-19 infection rates continue to rise and fall. Death rates for vaccinated people, however, remain relatively low, so many, if not most, Americans are unmasking and reclaiming the freedom of their pre-pandemic lives. Still, a virus that persists for this long […]

Seven Days in Solitary [6/29/22]

by Roxanne Barnes

June 29, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: • In the latest installment of the Voices From Solitary series, Solitary Watch published several poems written by Charles Tooker, which he composed in solitary confinement. Tooker has spent three years in solitary, and uses creative expression to cope with the isolation. His three pieces are entitled “It’s a Lifestyle: […]

Voices From Solitary: Solitary Poems

by Voices from Solitary

June 23, 2022

Charles Tooker, 47, has been incarcerated since 2016 and is currently being held at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad California. Having spent three of the last six years in solitary confinement, Tooker told Solitary Watch that creative expression is his biggest coping mechanism. His passion for the arts, he said, was present prior to […]

Seven Days in Solitary [6/22/22]

by Roxanne Barnes

June 23, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: •Solitary Watch reports on the latest Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities, data collected by the federal government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), reports 75,505 people were held in solitary confinement in state and federal prisons in 2019. This was the first BJS census to ask prisons […]

Long-Awaited Prison Census Shows More Than 75,000 People in Solitary Confinement

by Jean Casella and Vaidya Gullapalli

June 16, 2022

The most recent data collected and published by the federal government found 75,505 individuals in solitary confinement in the nation’s prisons—a significantly higher number than other recent surveys. The figure comes from the latest Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities, typically conducted every five to seven years by the Bureau of Justice Statistics […]

New Solitary Watch Fact Sheet Series Launches with “Racism and Solitary Confinement”

by Jean Casella

June 15, 2022

Today, Solitary Watch is publishing the first in a series of fact sheets offering facts, analysis, and resources on a variety of topics related to solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and immigrant and juvenile facilities. The first fact sheet, written by Melat Eskender, covers how racism in the U.S. punishment system plays out in […]

Seven Days in Solitary [6/15/22]

by Roxanne Barnes

June 15, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: •A series of haiku was published this week in the Solitary Watch Voices from Solitary series, featuring work from people incarcerated in Pennsylvania. The project, called Holler with Haiku, was a collection effort by Keystone DBlock, an offshoot from the advocacy group Straight Ahead, in honor of Mental Health […]

Voices from Solitary: Holler with Haiku

by Voices from Solitary

June 9, 2022

This May, members of Keystone DBloc, an offshoot of the Pennsylvania advocacy group Straight Ahead, wanted to use Mental Health Awareness Month to highlight the psychological damage caused by solitary. Several months ago, Keystone DBloc created the initiative “Holler with Haiku” to educate and “engage all members of our community of Decarceration activists: incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, family members, and supporters.”