Now Available: Solitary Watch Print Edition

Solitary Watch has issued its first quarterly print edition, in a four-page newsletter format with selected articles from the previous three months.

The print edition is available to download as a PDF: Print Edition Spring 2011

Hard copies are available to prisoners and their families and advocates and to non-profit organizations. To request (single or multiple) copies, please email solitarywatchnews@gmail.com or write to Solitary Watch, PO Box 11374, Washington, DC 20008.

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James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

James Ridgeway (1936-2021) was the founder and co-director of Solitary Watch. An investigative journalist for over 60 years, he served as Washington Correspondent for the Village Voice and Mother Jones, reporting domestically on subjects ranging from electoral politics to corporate malfeasance to the rise of the racist far-right, and abroad from Central America, Northern Ireland, Eastern Europe, Haiti, and the former Yugoslavia. Earlier, he wrote for The New Republic and Ramparts, and his work appeared in dozens of other publications. He was the co-director of two films and author of 20 books, including a forthcoming posthumous edition of his groundbreaking 1991 work on the far right, Blood in the Face. Jean Casella is the director of Solitary Watch. She has also published work in The Guardian, The Nation, and Mother Jones, and is co-editor of the book Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement. She has received a Soros Justice Media Fellowship and an Alicia Patterson Fellowship. She tweets @solitarywatch.

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2 comments

  • The Prison Nation…keep the working poor in prison in one form or another is the Capitalist mantra. Once down – eliminate them is the mantra of Capitalist Conservatives. There will be no $ to help advance anyone who has had the misfortune to be up against the Legal system in America.
    As evidenced by the ObamanationINC and his Will to Prosecute those who Torture – we can forget about real justice for real criminals like the Bush Crime Family / in lock step with the ObamanationINC Junta.
    The Prosecution/prosecutors are examples of Public Employees who should be incarcerated for life. i too am facing a prosecutor – but anticipating a Dismissal based on NO Evidence.

    Glad it’s available – but will save you a stamp for now.

  • DIANA MONTES-WALKER

    The stories told by Solitary Watch are tragedies. My own son, who is mentally ill and lived for 5 years in a state mental hospital was transferred to a prison several months after hitting a hospital tech-
    nician. He was in solitary confinement from the moment he entered the
    prison. Within 4 months, he attempted suicide twice. He suffered horrible torture, mentally, from being in solitary and decided his life was not worth living. I faxed the warden immediately and insisted they move my son out of the prison and into a hospital run by the Dept. of Mental Health rather than remain in a facility run by the Dept. of Corrections. He was transferred to Vacaville Medical Facility shortly thereafter. We still can visit him only thru glass, they call it “non-contact” visit. It has been nearly a year since I have been able to hug or touch my son. He is lonely, sad, and becoming sicker from this cruel treatment. We don’t know how to stop it. I am so afraid for him…we have hired an attorney to see if we can go to court and do something to help our son not have to go back to that prison. The laws seem to be in favor of locking up the mentally ill in solitary indefinately, with no real psychiatric treat-
    ment available to them, other than medications and “talking” thru the
    little opening in their cell doors. I have high blood pressure now and suffer from constant depression; I’m a nervous wreck all the time worrying daily about my son’s safety and mental health. I have trouble being a normal mom to my other two adult children and a normal grandmother to my grandchildren. Our entire family is suffering because of the unjust and cruel treatment of our son by this system. We need the public to help us all.

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