Solitary Watch

Texas Prisons on Statewide Lockdown…and Other News on Solitary Confinement This Week

New this week from Solitary Watch: In the most recent edition of Voices from Solitary, incarcerated artist and activist Timothy Young writes about his struggles living on California’s Death Row. According to Young, life on Death Row often entails frequent lockdowns, strip searches, and handcuffing whenever a person leaves their cell. Throughout the essay, Young […]

New York City Ordered to Pay up to $53 Million to Survivors of Solitary… And Other News on Solitary Confinement This Week

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: The Federal District Court in Manhattan has ordered New York City to pay up to $53 million to people illegally held in solitary confinement. New York’s Board of Correction requires people held in pretrial detention to undergo a fair hearing before being transferred from general […]

Man With Schizophrenia Starves to Death in Solitary…and Other News on Solitary Confinement This Week

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: Joshua McLemore, a 29-year-old man who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, died of starvation after being held naked and alone in a padded isolation cell at Indiana’s Jackson County Jail. A complaint filed in federal court alleges that the jail violated McLemore’s Fourteenth Amendment rights and […]

Seven Days in Solitary [11/30/2022]

New from Solitary Watch: • In an essay for our Voices from Solitary series, Tashon Burke, a 30-year-old Black man with psychiatric disabilities, writes about the more than eight years he has spent in solitary confinement during his incarceration in Pennsylvania. In this anguished essay, Burke describes the mental and emotional trauma caused by his years […]

Seven Days in Solitary [9/7/22]

• 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 […]

Supporting Solitary Watch

We depend upon the community of readers to support our effort to bring the humanitarian crisis of solitary confinement in the United States out of the shadows, and to bring an end to this torturous practice. Solitary Watch’s investigative reporting, research, outreach, and special projects such as Lifelines to Solitary all rely on your generous […]

Voices from Solitary: What My Mother Doesn’t Know

Juan Diaz, 40, has been incarcerated in New York State for over 20 years and has spent most of that time in solitary confinement. In correspondence with Solitary Watch staff, Diaz described how after his very first stint in solitary his “behavior became progressively violent and self-destructive”. Prison officials eventually placed him in isolation indefinitely, […]

Seven Days in Solitary [10/20/21]

• Jessica Schulberg from The Huffington Post and incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell interviewed dozens of people from across the country of the hundreds of thousands who were put in solitary confinement as a COVID prevention tactic. “Even under regular conditions, solitary confinement is a dehumanizing, tortuous form of punishment that often leads to depression, anxiety, paranoia, […]

No Touching Allowed for Many LGBTQ+ People in Prison

After a Thanksgiving Day meal, “J,” who was incarcerated at North Central Correctional Institute in Massachusetts, complained of a stomach ache. His friend Carlos, who requested to be identified by his first name only, leaned down from his top bunk and rubbed J’s head jokingly. “There, there,” he said, as the men laughed. Later that […]

Seven Days in Solitary [6/21/21]

• According to a press release published in the Beachwood Reporter, a judge certified a class action lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) earlier this month. The more than 28,000 people represented by the Uptown People’s Law Center filed the lawsuit to seek a court order that will limit IDOC’s ability to use solitary […]

In New York’s State Prisons, One Night in Solitary Can Derail an Education

Carlos wrote a play that was an extension of Dante’s Inferno. Jesse did a capstone research project on how pro se litigants—those who represent themselves—fare in court. Richard wrote a 20-page multidisciplinary report about the “tug of war” between negative risk factors and positive influences in the lives of young people. Victor’s studies were particularly […]

Seven Days in Solitary [8/31/20]

• The Intercept published an article on the use of solitary confinement in response to the coronavirus in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities across the country. Oscar Perez Aguirre, held at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility in Colorado said after his hospitalization for the virus, when he was still so weak that he couldn’t stand, […]

Fourteen 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 Committee of the Unlock the Box campaign, a group that has worked closely with Solitary Watch. Canales’ son is currently incarcerated at Theo Lacy […]

Seven Days in Solitary [8/3/20]

• The Equal Justice Initiative reported that 28-year-old Charles Braggs died in solitary confinement at the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Alabama on July 27, three days after the segregation supervisor reportedly sprayed a chemical agent at Braggs. People held in the segregation unit at St. Clair have reported unsanitary conditions, unbearable heat, faulty locks, […]

As Black Lives Matter Protests Mounted, Federal Prisons Went on Lockdown—and Their Staffs Were Deployed to the Streets

On June 2, for the first time in 25 years, the Bureau of Prisons directed all federal jails and prisons to implement a full lockdown, confining nearly 160,000 people to their cells and severely limiting contact with the outside world. The following day, on the orders of Attorney General William Barr, the Bureau pulled some […]

Fourteen 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 focused on a recent report from the national Unlock the Box campaign, which is based on research and analysis by Solitary Watch, and found that […]

Seven Days in Solitary [5/11/20]

• The Texas Tribune reported that of the people in prison who have been tested for the coronavirus, 70 percent have tested positive. Only one percent of the prison population, or 1,700 people, has been tested but the percentage of positive results far outweighs the ten percent of Texas residents throughout the whole state whose […]

Seven Days in Solitary [4/13/20]

• The Appeal reported that the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola has reopened the notorious solitary confinement unit Camp J to house incarcerated people infected with COVID-19. The unit was known as “the dungeon” for its starkly inhumane conditions. Fate Winslow, held at the Angola prison, said, “We are still packed in like sardines. The prison […]

Seven Days in Solitary [12/23/19]

• The Associated Press published an article on the high rate of suicides by people held in solitary confinement across New York state prisons. A report from the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision found that 30 of the 130 suicides between 2004 and 2013 in New York prison occurred in solitary […]

Seven Days in Solitary [10/28/19]

• According to the Hartford Courant, Judge Stefan Underhill has called the conditions “unconstitutional” for people held on Connecticut’s death row. While Connecticut has abolished capital punishment, a “compromise law” passed in 2012 mandated that in the absence of the death penalty, those sentenced to death must be held in solitary confinement for the rest of […]

Louisiana on Lockdown: Voices from Louisiana’s Solitary Confinement Cells

For the recent report Louisiana on Lockdown, a collaboration between Solitary Watch, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University New Orleans, more than 700 people held in solitary confinement in Louisiana state prisons completed a 12-page survey—the largest single survey conducted of people in solitary. The respondents provided vivid and deeply […]

Louisiana on Lockdown: The History of Solitary Confinement in Louisiana

The following is an excerpt from the report Louisiana on Lockdown, published this past June in a collaboration between Solitary Watch, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University New Orleans, with Solitary Watch’s Katie Rose Quandt as the lead author. For the report, the authors conducted the largest survey ever made […]

Seven Days in Solitary [9/2/19]

• The ACLU of Virginia announced that a lawsuit against the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) has moved forward, after Federal District Court Judge Robert Payne dismissed an attempt by the VDOC to dismiss the suit. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Nicolas Reyes, a Hispanic man who spent over twelve years in solitary confinement at Red […]

Solitary Confinement in Immigration Detention Is a Grim Reality—and Only Likely to Get Worse

Last month, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), in conjunction with The Intercept, NBC News, and Univision, published the results of an extensive investigation into the use of solitary confinement in American immigration detention facilities. The report, which reviewed 8,488 recorded stays in solitary confinement between 2012 and early 2017, found that solitary was […]

Voices from Solitary: I Spent 16 Months in Solitary Confinement, and Now I’m Fighting to End It

The following piece was written by Kiana Calloway, a formerly incarcerated organizer with Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), a grassroots organization in New Orleans made up of formerly incarcerated people and their allies that works for policy change and for full civil and human rights for people impacted by the criminal justice system. He is also […]

Groundbreaking New Report Exposes Impact of Solitary Confinement in Louisiana State Prisons

UPDATE: More than 50 people attended the press conference on Tuesday, June 25, where representatives of Solitary Watch, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University New Orleans introduced the report. The words of survey respondents currently in solitary confinement were shared by formerly incarcerated readers Kiana Calloway of Voice […]

Seven Days in Solitary [6/24/19]

• The New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement’s #HALTSolitary campaign released a statement in response to the failure of the New York legislature to pass the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act, which would have banned solitary for longer than fifteen days across New York State and implemented effective alternatives to isolation. […]

UPDATE: New York’s Elected Leaders Make Deal That Thwarts Passage of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act

UPDATE, June 20, 11:45 pm—As New York’s legislative session was extended by one day, members of the #HALTSolitary Campaign entered the eighth day of their hunger strike, which had grown to include at least 40 people. They continued to press legislative leaders to bring the HALT Solitary Confinement Act to a vote, but leaders of the both […]

Seven Days in Solitary [5/27/19]

• NBC News, The Intercept and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) jointly published the findings of a major investigation into the use of solitary confinement in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, based on their review of over 8,400 agency reports. The investigation found that immigrants face isolation as punishment for minor violations […]