About
Solitary Watch is a public website aimed at bringing the widespread use of solitary confinement and other forms of torture in U.S. prisons out of the shadows and into the light of the public square. Solitary Watch’s mission is to provide the public—as well as practicing attorneys, legal scholars, law enforcement and corrections officers, policymakers, educators, advocates, and prisoners—with the first centralized source of background research, unfolding news, and original reporting on solitary confinement in the United States. (Scroll down for a detailed project description.)
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All Guest Posts, Voices from Solitary, and extended quotations are © in the names of their original authors or publishers. Please contact copyright holders regarding reuse.
All other work is © Solitary Watch, licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please contact Solitary Watch with any questions.
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Project Staff
James Ridgeway and Jean Casella, co-directors and co-editors
Rob D’Amato, development associate
Dina Levy, reporter/researcher
Valeria Monfrini, reporter/videographer
Elisa Mosler, reporter/researcher
Sal Rodriguez, reporter/researcher and social media manager
Daniel H. Goldman and Ryan Brimmer, research associates
Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse, Washington & Lee University Law School, lead academic partner
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Project Advisors
Lois Ahrens, Director, The Real Cost of Prisons Project
Stephen B. Bright, President and Senior Counsel, Southern Center for Human Rights
David Bruck, Professor and Director, Virginia Captial Case Clearinghouse, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Marina Drummer, Administrator, Community Futures Collective
David C. Fathi, Director, ACLU National Prison Project
Bonnie Kerness, Coordinator, Prison Watch Project and STOPMAX Campaign, American Friends Service Committee
Robert King, activist and author; survivor of 29 years in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Pententiary, Angola
Terry Kupers, MD, MSP, Institute Professor, The Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology; clinical psychiatrist and expert in forensic mental health
Rev. Stan Moody, Pastor, Meeting House Church, Manchester, ME; former chaplain, Maine State Prison
Michael B. Mushlin, Professor, Pace University School of Law
Wilbert Rideau, journalist and author; former prisoner and Angolite editor at the Louisiana State Pententiary, Angola
Laura Rovner, Associate Professor and Director, Civil Rights Clinic, University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Meryl Schwartz, Portfolio Manager, Blue Ridge Foundation New York
Charles Sullivan, Executive Director, CURE
Affiliations are for identification purposes only.
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Project Description
A printable one-page description of Solitary Watch can be downloaded here: ABOUT SOLITARY WATCH (pdf)
The use and abuse of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons is one of the most pressing domestic human rights issues in America today—and also one of the most invisible. The routine isolation of prisoners has grown dramatically in the past three decades, outpacing even the growth in the general prison population. Today, at least 25,000 prisoners are being held in long-term solitary in the nation’s “supermax” facilities. According to available data, the total number of prisoners living in solitary confinement in all prisons and jails exceeds 80,000.
Far from being a last-resort measure reserved for the “worst of the worst,” solitary confinement has become a control strategy of first resort in many prisons. This despite the fact that it has never been shown to serve any legitimate penological purpose, and may actually increase both prison violence and recidivism. Today, inmates can be placed in complete isolation for months or years not only for violent acts but for possessing contraband, using drugs, ignoring orders, or using profanity. Thousands of prisoners are held in indefinite solitary confinement because they have been “validated” as gang members, based on information from other inmates who are rewarded for “snitching.” Others have ended up in solitary because they have untreated mental illnesses, are children in need of “protection,” are gay or transgender, are Muslim, have unsavory political beliefs, or report rape or abuse by prison officials. In Virginia, a dozen Rastafarian men have been in solitary for ten years because they refuse to cut their hair on religious grounds.
For the inmates who endure it, life in solitary confinement means spending at least 23 hours a day in a cell that measures, on average, 6 x 9 feet, within supermax prisons or prison units that have made a science out of isolation. Their meals generally come through slots in the solid steel doors of their cells, as do any communications with prison staff. Some are permitted to exercise one hour a day, alone, in a fenced or walled “dog run.” Prisoners in solitary confinement may be denied visits, telephone calls, television, reading materials, and art supplies. And they can remain in isolation for months, years, or decades. In Louisiana, two prisoners now in their sixties have been in solitary confinement for more than 39 years.
Numerous studies have found evidence of the psychological damage caused by solitary confinement. One recent federal court case called solitary confinement units “virtual incubators of psychoses–seeding illness in otherwise healthy inmates and exacerbating illness in those already suffering from mental infirmities” (Ruiz v. Johnson 2001). As little as a week in solitary has been shown to affect EEG activity, while longer stretches produce psychopathologies at an alarmingly high rate. For those prisoners already suffering from or prone to mental illness–which in some states can make up nearly half of all inmates in solitary–solitary confinement can cause irreparable psychological damage, as well as extreme mental anguish. Studies in New York and California have shown that a highly disproportionate number of prison suicides take place in solitary confinement.
Polls show that a clear majority of Americans oppose the use of torture under any circumstances, even on foreign terrorism suspects. Yet conditions in U.S. prisons and jails, which at times transgress the boundaries of humane treatment, have produced little outcry. The widespread practice of solitary confinement, in particular, has received scant media attention, and has yet to find a firm place in the public discourse or on political platforms.
Solitary Watch is a web-based project aimed at bringing solitary confinement out of the shadows and into the light of the public square. Our mission is to provide the public—as well as practicing attorneys, legal scholars, law enforcement and corrections officers, policymakers, educators, advocates, and prisoners–with the first centralized source for background research, unfolding news, and original reporting on solitary confinement in the United States.
Solitary Watch produces a daily blog, as well as longer investigative articles and fact sheets on various aspects of solitary confinement, and maintains a comprehensive library of resources on solitary confinement. A quarterly print edition is sent free of charge to prisoners and advocates. Solitary Watch also publishes “Voices from Solitary”—firsthand writing and video testimonies that give a human face to the facts and figures, and to a subset of inmates that is even more invisible than the prison population at large.
In addition, Solitary Watch is developing a data bank on solitary confinement, in cooperation with Washington and Lee University Law School and other academic partners. This significant research project will go state by state and prison by prison to document the number of prisoners held in solitary, their conditions and the criteria used to condemn them to solitary.
Recent challenges to the use and abuse of solitary confinement by the American Civil Liberties Union, American Friends Service Committee, and National Religious Campaign Against Torture, as well as grassroots groups and prisoners themselves, clearly show that this is an issue whose time has come. The goal of Solitary Watch is to support and inform these efforts by providing vital information and reporting, and to help place solitary confinement on the public agenda as an undeniable issue of basic human rights.
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Project Support
Solitary Watch News functions as an independent media and advocacy project, funded by grants and donations. Solitary Watch News is a project of the Community Futures Collective, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, which serves as its fiscal sponsor for all grants and donations. For information on making a donation, please click here.
