Voices from Solitary: “That’s the Only Mail I Get…”

January 9, 2013 By 7 Comments

Barbed wireThe following was written a few days before Christmas by a man, now in his fifties,  who has been in prison for 26 years. He wrote this in response to receiving a holiday card and note from Solitary Watch.

To help us keep in touch with people in solitary confinement throughout the year, please consider a donation to our “Lifelines to Solitary” project. (Even $10 allows us to keep in touch with someone in isolation for a full year.) Our kickstarter runs out in just six days, and from now through January 15, a generous donor (who prefers to remain anonymous) has pledged to match all donations, up to $500.

To make a donation, please follow this link. Thank you for your support!  –Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

Thank you for replying. I was surprised when they called mail call and they called my name.  I never receive any mail except once a month, one letter a month from my mom, she’s barely able to write…Best if you take me serious, and not pull my leg. Please don’t take me wrong and no pun intended. It is just over the years I’ve wrote hundreds of different groups and a lot of big ministries and nobody has ever wrote to me. I used to trade my food trays for stamps and envelopes but nobody wants to help or cares…

Heck, we stay locked in for 22 out of 24 hours in this cold concrete and steel. They won’t give us winter clothes. The jacket they hand out you can see through it. Our food is brought to us and it is always ice cold, most of the time straight out of the freezer and it’s left overs…and most of the time the loaf meat they give us is raw and stinks. On Thanksgiving we had peanut butter sandwich with meat sandwich and a pack of cookies…There were lots of us hungry that night. And it’s coming again Christmas and New Years. I dread it. The wardens here are big and fat. We’ll be locked down most of Christmas day. Because they have a Christmas party for the officers. You can smell the food cooking.

Anyways my friend, this life is and has got old. Tomorrow brings nothing but the same thing and at my age, well, who wants to see tomorrow. A human has to have something to hold on to or they lose all hope. And this old body is getting hard to even move around. I’ve got arthritis so bad it hurts to just move-from this cold air. I am sorry I don’t have a Christmas card to send you. You have a Merry Christmas up there in Washington and thank you for writing. That’s the only mail I get…

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Holiday Kickstarter for Our “Lifelines to Solitary” Project

December 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Dear Readers, Supporters, and Friends:

In the three years since the founding of Solitary Watch, there has been a remarkable groundswell of activism around solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. Solitary confinement is increasingly seen as a major issue of domestic human rights, with a true and growing movement opposing its use and abuse. (See our Action page for more information.)

While our larger aim is to challenge the torture of solitary confinement and build a more humane future, we are always aware of the more than 80,000 prisoners currently suffering in solitary on any given day in the United States. That’s why this year we are initiating a “Lifelines to Solitary” project, which will enable us to maintain direct contact more than 500 men, women, and children in solitary confinement, sending personalized holiday cards and letters as well as Solitary Watch newsletters throughout the year.

Drawing by Martin Vargas

For people in conditions of isolation and sensory deprivation–conditions known to cause anguish, madness, and even suicide–these communications can be a crucial lifeline, a connection to the outside world, and a reminder that they are not forgotten.

To support “Lifelines to Solitary” we have launched a Kickstarter-type campaign on Razoo (a specialized platform for nonprofits). Our modest fundraising goal for this project is $2,500–a small price compared with the solace it will bring to hundreds of people who are buried alive in American prisons and jails. As little as $10 enables us to keep in touch with one person in solitary throughout the year, while $500 pays for the cost of printing and mailing a newsletter.

Please give at any level, and become part of this effort to bring a spark of light into the darkness of solitary. Click on the link below to make your donation to “Lifelines to Solitary” via our nonprofit sponsor, Community Futures Collective. And please share this post with your own networks.

http://www.razoo.com/story/Lifelines-To-Solitary

With warm holiday wishes, and grateful thanks for your concern and support–

Jean and Jim

 

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New from Solitary Watch: “Solitary 101” PowerPoint Presentation

November 12, 2012 By 12 Comments

Our “Solitary 101″ PowerPoint, developed for the recent Midwest Coalition for Human Rights conference on Solitary Confinement and Human Rights, is now available online. The 60-slide PowerPoint includes sections on the history of solitary confinement, solitary as it is practiced in the United States today, and the growing movement against solitary confinement.

We encourage educators and advocates to use, share, and customize the presentation according to their needs (for non-commercial purposes only, with proper attribution to Solitary Watch). No advance permission is necessary, although we will appreciate hearing about how you are using the presentation, as well as any suggestions for improvement.

Solitary Watch’s ‘Solitary 101′ Powerpoint Presentation

Solitary Watch’s ‘Solitary 101′ Powerpoint — Printable Version

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, human rights, media, mental illness, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, torture Tagged With: , ,

New on Solitary Watch: “Action” Page

June 15, 2012 By 1 Comment

Many readers of Solitary Watch have asked us to add to our site a list of things they can do to oppse the use and abuse of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails.

The mission of Solitary Watch is primarily to shine a light into these domestic black sites and expose the practice of solitary confinement in order to spur public debate and reform. However, there are many other groups involved in directly organizing against solitary confinement, and more and more related events and actions across the country.

Our stellar intern Sal Rodriguez has now created an “Action” page for the site to collect information on organizations and events. Please click on the tab above to check out this work-in-progress. And to suggest an item for the Action page, please email it to solitarywatchnews@gmail.com.

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New from Solitary Watch: Original Videos on Solitary Confinement

August 16, 2011 By 5 Comments

Today marks the launch of a Solitary Watch video channel on YouTube. The channel will feature original video interviews with former prisoners, family members, and advocates, as well as a collection of other videos on solitary confinement. We begin with three short video interviews  shot by Valeria Monfrini, a student at Corcoran College of Art + Design who is completing an internship as a reporter and videographer at Solitary Watch.

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Bonnie Kerness, whose wealth of hands-on involvement with prisoners held in solitary has inspired and informed so much of the movement against prison isolation, comes out of the civil rights movement. As she describes it, “Since 1975, I have been a human rights  advocate on behalf of prisoners throughout the country. Currently, I coordinate the Prison Watch Project for the American Friends Service Committee  (AFSC).” Kerness works out of the AFSC office in Newark, and on a June day this year, she shared her own analysis before  introducing us to two people who experienced solitary confinement firsthand.

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Munirah El-Bomani spent time in New Jersey women’s prisons in the late 1990s. She landed in solitary, she says, because she stood up for herself and was branded a troublemaker. Today she fights for a living as a street vendor and civil rights activist in Newark. More than a decade after her release, she remains haunted by her prison experiences, and by the fear of going back.

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Ojore Lutalo was imprisoned in 1982 on an armed robbery conviction, and released in 2009. He spent the majority of his 26 years behind bars in isolation because of his associations with the Anarchist Black Cross Federation and Black Liberation Army. For much of this time, he was in the Management Control Unit at Trenton State Prison. The MCU, one of the earliest units of its kind, was known for using solitary confinement to isolate prisoners who held unsavory political beliefs or sought to organize other inmates. Here Lutalo describes his time in solitary, including an incident in 2005, when he was summarily thrown into what the prisoners call the “boom-boom room”—formally referred to as mental health unit 1-C, where “I was not allowed to shower, change my clothing, have soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, washcloth or towel. I was not allowed to make telephone calls, send out or receive personal or legal mail. I was also not allowed to receive personal or legal visits or take part in any inside or outside recreational activities.” Lutalo also guides viewers through his artwork, which he says helped him remain sane and strong while inside.

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Filed Under: corrections industry, human rights, media, New Jersey, political prisoners, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Confronting Torture in U.S. Prisons: A Q&A With Solitary Watch

June 17, 2011 By 13 Comments

The following interview with James Ridgeway and Jean Casella, conducted by Angola 3 News, appeared earlier this week on Alternet (where you can read the introduction, which includes background on the upcoming prisoner hunger strike at Pelican Bay.)

Angola 3 News: How did you first become interested in the issue of solitary confinement and ultimately become inspired to start Solitary Watch?

Solitary Watch: We started Solitary Watch because this issue grabbed us by the throats. The solitary confinement of tens of thousands of prisoners may be the most grievous mass human rights violation that’s taking place on American soil, yet it’s been largely concealed from and ignored by the public, and seriously under-reported by the press.

Solitary confinement is a hidden world within the larger hidden world of the prison system, and prisoners in solitary are an invisible and dehumanized minority within the larger population of prison inmates in general–who also remain remarkably invisible and dehumanized, considering that they now number nearly 2.3 million and constitute one in every 100 adults in this country.

We don’t mean to sound self-righteous about any of this, because until two years ago we were as ignorant about this subject as anyone. Like so many other people, we were outraged by the abuses taking place at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, yet we knew relatively little about the abuses happening here at home, in our own prisons and jails. What changed that was Jim’s reporting for Mother Jones on the Angola 3. To discover that there were men who had been living isolated in 6 x 9-foot cells for nearly 40 years—well, that clearly shocked the conscience.

That was the beginning of our education. We began to learn more and more about this torturous netherworld of solitary confinement that exists, in one form or another, in every state of the union. And we discovered that there were activists and lawyers and scholars and prisoners’ families and even a handful of journalists out there who were trying to draw attention to the issue, but no centralized, comprehensive source of information.

A3N: Can you please briefly tell us about your background before Solitary Watch?

SW: Jim has more than 40 years of experience as an investigative journalist, and Jean has been an editor for independent media and run small nonprofit organizations. It seemed like together we had the skills we needed to start up a web-based project that would serve as an information clearinghouse on solitary confinement, as well as a forum for whatever original reporting we might do on the subject. And we’ve been fortunate enough to get some funding from several generous donors. That was the genesis of Solitary Watch, which went online a year and a half ago.

A3N: What is a SHU?

SW: SHU is just one of many euphemisms prison systems have developed to avoid using the term “solitary confinement.” In California, it stands for Security Housing Unit; in New York it is Special Housing Unit. Elsewhere we see Special Management Units, Behavioral Management Units, Communications Management Units, Administrative Segregation, Disciplinary Segregation—the list goes on. There are nuances of difference among them, but they all consist of 23- to 24-hour-a-day lockdown.  Most of these systems—including the federal Bureau of Prisons—deny that they use solitary confinement, even while they have tens of thousands of prisoners locked alone in their cells for months, years, even decades.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: California, civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, cost/budget issues, due process, Eighth Amendment, featured posts, federal prisons, human rights, international agreements, juveniles, media, mental illness, physical effects, political prisoners, politics of punishment, popular culture, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, torture Tagged With: , , ,

Now Available: Solitary Watch Print Edition

May 1, 2011 By 2 Comments

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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Solitary Watch Milestones

September 25, 2010 By 5 Comments

This has been a significant week at Solitary Watch, for two reasons. On Monday, nine months after our first post, we reached 100,000 hits. More importantly, this week we introduce our new Project Advisors, a distinguished group of lawyers, scholars, and advocates who have honored us by agreeing to provide advice and guidance as we move into our second year.

Solitary Watch 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

Charles Sullivan, Executive Director, CURE

Affiliations are provided for identification purposes only.

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