Seven Days in Solitary [12/13/2015]

Our Weekly Roundup of News and Views on Solitary Confinement

by | December 13, 2015

• The Colorado Department of Corrections will spend more than $4.7 million to build an outdoor recreation area at the state’s highest security prison, Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP). The move is a result of a lawsuit settlement alleging that the conditions of confinement at CSP were unconstitutional.

• Those in attendance at a legislative hearing in Alaska heard testimony about the death of Davon Mosley, who passed away in 2014 in an Anchorage prison solitary confinement cell. Videos recently released by investigators “show a naked Mosley being pepper sprayed, having food thrown at him, staggering in his cell and leaning against the wall while taking his final breaths.”

• Warden Burl Cain, who has headed up Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola since 1995, is stepping down. Cain has overseen the longtime solitary confinement of people held at the prison, including the last incarcerated member of the Angola 3 Albert Woodfox.

• Ten men filed a complaint against the Theo Lacey immigration detention center in California. One allegation included being placed in “modular housing units” that were used as “a form of solitary confinement because the individual is placed in physical and social isolation for 23 hours a day with little or no human contact.”

• Concerns about the use of extended solitary confinement continue within Maine’s Department of Corrections, despite the DOC’s claims that it has sharply reduced the use of segregation. One individual buy xanax in jakarta interviewed in the story, Douglas Burr, has been in isolation for a year and a half and says he does not know why.

• Arab and Muslims who were detained in allegedly harsh conditions following the attacks of September 11, can sue former top US officials, a court has ruled. The plaintiffs, who were held on minor immigration violations, maintain that they were held in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours per day.

• Former Alabama Governonr Don Siegelman has allegedly been held in solitary confinement for the last two months. Siegelman’s attorneys maintain he was moved into isolation after being interviewed about criminal justice reform on a radio talk show.

• A Miami Herald investigation into sexual abuse at Lowell Correctional prison found that women who made complaints about their treatment were subsequently almost always placed in solitary confinement. “If you report you are raped, you sit in a 10-by-12 cell with nothing but your uniform, and they close the door. They put you under investigation, they say for your own safety, then they leave you there until you write up a witness statement that it never happened,” said one former prisoner.”

• Former Guantanamo detainee Shaker Aamer, who spent 14 years locked up without charge, told his story in an interview with BBC News. While at Guantanamo, he was placed in solitary confinement for nearly three years.

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