Solitary Watch has openings for Fall 2024 interns. We offer interns an opportunity to gain writing, research, and outreach skills while working on an important domestic human rights issue. Especially encouraged to apply are individuals with a background or interest in journalism, law, and/or criminal justice; those interested in utilizing media to advance social justice; and individuals directly impacted by the criminal legal system. For details and application instructions, please visit https://solitarywatch.org/about/internships/.

Felix Sitthivong, an incarcerated journalist and recipient of a Ridgeway Reporting Project grant from Solitary Watch, describes the suppression of cultural awareness groups in Washington state prisons, which mislabel these organizations as gangs. Sitthivong is the former president of the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group (APICAG), which has provided community and resources for many incarcerated individuals, along with a deep history of activism and organizing. The Department of Corrections has attempted to suppress the APICAG for years, resulting in Sitthivong spending multiple periods in solitary confinement. Despite these efforts, Sitthivong writes, he remains resolute in building community with his API brothers. Prism.

Felix Sitthivong is a journalist and organizer currently incarcerated in Washington State. He received a grant from Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project to write his latest story, published in Prism, in which he reports on the history, importance, and repression of cultural awareness groups in prison. As the former president of the prison’s Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group, Sitthivong illustrates how these cultural preservation groups build community and create safe spaces for healing. Yet the Washington State Department of Corrections has long claimed these groups were “gangs,” and targeted their deep roots in activism and organizing, sometimes placing their leaders in solitary confinement or transferring them to different prisons. The following is an excerpt from his article, which can be read in full at Prism. — Valerie Kiebala.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. New York City Mayor Eric Adams issued an executive order that suspended parts of a new solitary confinement ban, Local Law 42. The order prevented a variety of checks on confinement, including a four-hour limit on detaining people in “de-escalation confinement” and other limits on restraints. AP News | The move, which came the day before Local Law 42 was set to go into effect, is the latest update in a months-long debate over NYC jail reform. The City Council already approved the bill twice—the second time to override Adams’ veto—and proponents of the legislation criticized Adams’s order. “This is a shameful tactic, another desperate abuse of power by this administration to try and ignore laws it opposes,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said. Daily News.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. Before dropping out of the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, candidate Kamala Harris took a strong position against solitary confinement. Harris was one of only three out of thirteen Democratic candidates who accepted an invitation to attend the first town hall organized by formerly incarcerated people, held at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The Marshall Project | There, and in her criminal justice platform for 2020, she promised to “end solitary confinement, but ensure alternative therapeutic and rehabilitative mechanisms are available to protect the safety of individuals in prisons and of prison staff.” Kamala’s Plan to Transform the Criminal Justice System and Re-Envision Public Safety in America (2019) | As a U.S. Senator from California, Harris co-sponsored legislation to limit solitary confinement in immigration detention, as well as an early version of Sen. Dick Durbin’s bill to reform (but not end) solitary in federal prisons. | Earlier in her career, while serving as Attorney General of California, Harris had a mixed record, at best, on criminal justice and prison reform. On solitary confinement specifically, she supported legislation to limit solitary in juvenile detention. But under her leadership, the state’s Department of Justice initially pushed back hard against a landmark lawsuit (Ashker v. Brown) to end indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement in the state’s adult prisons, before finally settling the case in 2015. Truthdig.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. On July 11, with unanimous bipartisab suppot, the U.S. Senate passed the Federal Prison Oversight Act, which aims to overhaul oversight of the Bureau of Prisons. The bill has already passed in the House, and now goes to President Biden’s desk. The legislation comes after years of controversy and crisis emerging from the federal prison system, including issues with sexual abuse, understaffing, and unsafe conditions. The text of the bill provides for “Creation of an inspections regime for the Bureau of Prisons,” which, among other things, would demand that prisons provide the Inspector General with information on “the policies and practices relating to the use of single-cell confinement, administrative segregation, and other forms of restrictive housing” as well as “lockdowns at the facility.” The bill now goes to the President’s desk to be signed into law. H.R. 3019 | Solitary Watch’s Katie Rose Quandt recently published an exposé of the rampant use of solitary confinement in the BOP. The American Prospect.

For Solitary Watch readers who are inspired to take action against the pervasive practice of solitary confinement, the Resources section on our website (see top menu) now includes Resources for Action. This curated selection of national organizations and state campaigns offers a starting point for getting involved in the movement to end solitary. We will also periodically be featuring Action Alerts as part of this weekly roundup—see below for the first of these alerts. Solitary Watch.

For Solitary Watch readers who are inspired to take action against the pervasive practice of solitary confinement, the Resources section on our website (see top menu) now includes Resources for Action. This curated selection of national organizations and state campaigns offers a starting point for getting involved in the movement to end solitary. Solitary Watch.

The most recent fact sheet in our series covers children in solitary confinement. “Solitary confinement causes serious physical, neurological, and psychological harm to adults, and has even more dire effects on children, whose minds and bodies are still growing and developing,” the fact sheet states. “The United Nations classifies solitary confinement as cruel and inhumane treatment that often rises to the level of torture, and has called for a complete ban on placing children in solitary. Despite this fact, thousands of kids experience isolation every day in adult jails and prisons and in juvenile facilities.” Solitary Watch.

Today, Solitary Watch is publishing the seventh in a series of fact sheets that offer facts, analysis, and resources on a variety of topics related to solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and immigrant and juvenile facilities. This fact sheet, written by Ella Whittaker, Abigail Gorman, and Ashanti Bruce, is titled “Children in Solitary Confinement.”

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. After spending more than 22 years in solitary confinement, Frank De Palma is advocating for an end to the practice. He co-wrote a memoir about his experiences, “Never to Surrender!” and testified before the Nevada Legislature on solitary’s damaging effects on his mental health, self-perception, and social interactions. Journalist Natalia Galiczca profiled De Palma, detailing his journey from an arrest as a teenager, through years of degrading solitary confinement, to his release and ongoing recovery. “Occasionally, he’ll walk across the street to a nearby food market for iced tea,” Galiczca writes. “Or just step outside his door to feel the sun against his skin.” In January 2024, Nevada became the third state to restrict solitary to 15 consecutive days or less. Deseret News.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. Of the nearly one in six transgender people who report experiencing prison or jail, most will also face violence and solitary confinement while incarcerated. Despite knowing the disproportionate harm faced by transgender incarcerated people, their voices often go unheard. “People are the experts of their own lives,” says Kenna Barnes, advocacy manager for Black and Pink National, “Society often sees people who have been incarcerated—or who are incarcerated—as folks who don’t know what they need. And they certainly do.” In a recent series of interviews, the Vera Institute of Justice asked five transgender people about their experiences being incarcerated. The interviewees described facing abuse and being placed in long-term solitary confinement for punishment or “protection,” and called for more humane treatment. Ky (he/him) recalled: “I would lash out when they would say things to me. Then I realized that they would do this just so they could bring charges on me to take me to lockdown in a solitary confinement cell. I would be in lockdown for a month at a time. For a year, I was in and out of lockdown. Sometimes they would turn the lights on and leave them on forever as a way to irritate people. Or they would just leave you in complete darkness. You could go a day, or two days, without them turning the lights on. You had no light except the little light coming in under your door. When we were in lockdown, we would scream to each other through the vents, like, ‘Hey what are you doing over there?’ We would try to slide notes across the floor to other cells, just to have some human contact. If the officers saw us slipping paper under the door, they would step on it and throw it away, or they would get it and read it in front of everybody.” Vera Institute of Justice.

Incarcerated writer and Ridgeway Reporting Grant recipient Kwaneta Harris shares her experience with women’s solitary confinement in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Harris highlights the rampant sexual abuse against women and girls inside TDCJ prisons perpetrated by staff and maintained through threats of solitary confinement. Beyond intimidation, Harris exposes how staff at TDCJ prisons prey on those isolated by solitary and use the harsh conditions to further remove them from any supportive contact. However, despite the terrible environment of solitary and prison, chosen families provide support for those suffering inside. Scalawag Magazine.

The gifted and prolific incarcerated journalist Kwaneta Harris received a grant from Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project to write her latest piece, just published by Scalawag. Harris, who wrote this scathing expose from inside a solitary confinement cell, reveals how solitary units become fertile ground for the sexual abuse and exploitation of women and of girls as young as 16. What follows is an excerpt from that article, which can be read in full at Scalawag. Read more of Kwaneta Harris’s writing on Solitary Watch and on her website. —Jean Casella.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a panel of experts urged Congress to support legislation or a constitutional amendment to reform the use of forced prison labor. Prison labor is used nationally for farming, fighting wildfires, and other high-risk jobs. Over three-quarters of all incarcerated people are forced to work without minimum wage protections for cents an hour, or not paid at all in many states. The work is mandatory, and those who refuse are subjected to punishments like solitary confinement or loss of family visits. Members of the committee were split along party lines on their responses to the issue, with Senators Dick Durbin and Cory Booker, among other Democrats, supporting the idea of regulating prison labor and working towards more rights for incarcerated workers, while Louisiana Republican John Kennedy dismissed the argument as “emotional” and unproductive. Courthouse News Service ⎸ Prison reform advocate Terrance Winn, Principle Human Rights Researcher for the ACLU Jennifer Turner, Manhattan Institute Fellow Charles Lehman, and Distinguished Professor of Law at Loyola University Andrea Armstrong testified at the hearing. U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. Testimonies of people incarcerated all over Texas reveal horrifying conditions, long stays in solitary, and evidence of widespread abuse from correctional officers. Incarcerated people describe being kept in solitary confinement cells no bigger than a bathroom 22 to 24 hours a day in extreme heat. More than 500 people have been kept in solitary confinement in Texas for a decade or longer, more than any other state. Writer Damascus James explains how, in the wake of a post-COVID-19 hunger strike, numerous bills aimed at capping the time that one can spend in isolation, and improving conditions more generally, were introduced to the Texas legislature. Not one of them has passed. Despite glaring evidence that solitary confinement does not reduce violence in prisons, Texas still allows its use for years at a time. James discusses the desire born out of the state’s continuous purposeful ignorance of those suffering in its prisons to uplift their voices and tell their stories. This led to the creation of the TEXAS LETTERS PROJECT, which publishes writing by incarcerated people, highlighting their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The Dallas Morning News | In an interview, James explains the importance of hearing first hand experiences of solitary confinement’s effects and how it harms people. Houston Public Media | Alexis Guereca writes about conditions in solitary, where she has been held for over a year. TEXAS LETTERS PROJECT.

Writing in the American Prospect in an article supported by Solitary Watch, our senior writer Katie Rose Quandt explores the continued use of solitary confinement by the federal Bureau of Prisons despite its numerous proven negative impacts, and the BOP’s continued failure to meet recommendations for reform from its own reports and studies. The vast majority of the more than 11,000 people in federal solitary are there not because they are deemed dangerous, but because they are in “administrative detention,” simply awaiting a disciplinary hearing, transfer, or placement. Interviews with people held in federal solitary providing strong evidence that the BOP’s flawed operations uphold inhumane conditions. Quandt also highlights proposed federal legislation aimed at reducing or ending solitary confinement. The American Prospect.

After some time off, we are reviving “The Word from Solitary Watch,” our monthly series of dispatches by Solitary Watch staff and contributors. The mainstream media has traditionally gotten most of its information about what goes on inside prisons from corrections officials—government employees who feed stories to journalists, aimed at protecting the institution’s image. Mainstream media’s failure to develop and employ not only incarcerated sources, but also incarcerated journalists as community-based reporters, represents a loss of an absolutely critical perspective. The result is that what happens in U.S. prisons is sanitized before it ever reaches the public.

For Mother’s Day, we are reposting this article, originally published in November 2020. It was May 2020, and Esther Arias was finally going to be released from prison. For years of her 14-year sentence, she had held out hope that she would win her appeal and surprise her four kids one day by picking them up from school. But by the time her now-adult children came to the prison gate to welcome her home, her appearance had changed so much from lack of food and sunlight that they didn’t recognize her.

This investigative feature story, written by our Senior Writer Katie Rose Quandt and supported by Solitary Watch, appeared earlier this week in The American Prospect. Visit TAP’s website to read the full piece. • • • • • • • • • •...