This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. A lengthy feature in the New York Times explores how prisons and jails across the United States have become the nation’s largest providers of inpatient mental health treatment. It’s estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 currently incarcerated people have a serious mental illness, which is ten times higher than the number of people with serious mental illness in hospitals and treatment facilities. Carceral facilities are often dangerously unequipped to provide adequate treatment to incarcerated people with mental health issues, and many end up in solitary confinement due to behavioral problems resulting from untreated mental illness. Solitary confinement exacerbates mental health issues and can even be deadly. In one case, a man with repeated hospitalizations for mental health lost 50 to 60 pounds over three weeks in solitary confinement before dying of organ failure due to a “refusal to eat or drink.” However, documents from the resulting wrongful death lawsuit showed that prison staff did not attempt interventions like initiating intravenous feeding or transferring the man to a facility with more mental health treatment options. New York Times.

For World Press Freedom Day Friday, May 3, at 12 pm PT / 3 pm ET, Solitary Watch Editor-in-Chief Juan Moreno Haines joins a panel of distinguished incarcerated writers to discuss the limits of First Amendment rights. Although the Federal Bureau of Prisons bars incarcerated people from being journalists and many states prohibit incarcerated writers from being compensated for their work, Haines and others continue to work to expose the reality of life in prison. The Zoom event, called “Behind Enemy Lines: Incarcerated Journalists Fight for Press Freedom,” is free, but registration is required. Freelance Solidarity.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. In 2022, Appling County Jail officer William Rentz allegedly wrapped a chain around Tremar Harris’s neck while he and three other guards restrained Harris to a chair in solitary confinement. During the assault, Rentz, who is white, is also accused of telling Harris, who is Black, that he was “gonna put you back in the cotton field with the other boys.” Although Rentz was fired after the incident and is currently facing criminal charges, Harris recently filed a civil complaint against the other three guards present during the incident. According to the complaint, the failure of the other staff members to intervene amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Miami Herald | Video footage of the incident shows Harris restrained to a chair in solitary confinement with his eyes closed in mouth open when Rentz wrapped a loose leg restrain around his neck. The suit alleges that not only did the other three officers fail to intervene, but they also did not document or report the incident. WTOC.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on solitary confinement. Titled Legacy of Harm: Eliminating the Abuse of Solitary Confinement, the hearing opened with remarks from solitary survivor Damon Thibodeaux, who stated, “life in solitary is made all the worse because its often a hopeless existence.” Over the next two hours, the committee heard testimony from witnesses regarding the conditions of solitary confinement and the longstanding mental, physical, and psychological harm it causes. United States Committee on the Judiciary | Committee member Cory Booker (D, NJ) said at the hearing: “This is sick, this is unacceptable and this is un-American.” He stated that solitary confinement “is a practice that is so byzantine, so universally condemned by other peer nations, so torturous to individuals … it is stunning to me that this practice goes on in our nation at such a widespread level.” Courthouse News Service | Ahead of the hearing, the Federal Anti-Solitary Taskforce (FAST) held a press conference featuring advocates and solitary survivors, urging federal lawmakers to pass the End Solitary Confinement Act. WHIO-TV.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. A new report from the Vera Institute of Justice and Black & Pink documents the disproportionate abuse faced by transgender incarcerated people. Of the 280 respondents across 31 states, 90 percent stated they had been placed in solitary confinement. Current housing policies inadequately address the needs of transgender incarcerated people, and reforms are difficult to implement due to the group’s unique needs. While 66 percent of incarcerated trans women say they wish to be housed in women’s facilities, so do 58 percent of trans men. According to Jennifer Pierce, a senior researcher at Vera, addressing the needs of trans people in prison “goes against the way that prisons operate, which is having a single set of rigid rules that are applied unilaterally for everybody.” The Appeal.

Xandan, a trans-masculine writer incarcerated in Texas, has been in solitary confinement for over seven years due to his gender identity and as retribution for his journalism exposing the inhumane conditions faced by transgender incarcerated people. As a 2023 recipient of a Ridgeway Reporting Project grant, Xandan’s latest article “The Horrific Reality of Transgender Individuals in Texas Prisons,” was published in The Advocate. In addition to the article’s searing descriptions of his life in solitary confinement, Xandan also shared with Solitary Watch the diary entries that vividly recount his experience following a brutal 2020 assault. Solitary Watch.

Xandan (Britney Gulley) is a female-to-male trans person and writer who is incarcerated in Texas state prison. Xandan has been held in solitary confinement for over seven years due to his gender identity and as retribution for his published exposés that unveil the inhumane conditions that transgender prisoners face. Some of his articles can be found in the San Francisco Bayview, Texas Letters Project, Southern Cultures Journal, and Prison Insider.

Incarcerated journalist and Solitary Watch contributing writer Kwaneta Harris has spent the last eight years in solitary confinement. Her powerful and shocking stories expose how the intersections of gender, race, and place contribute to state-sanctioned, gender-based violence. In a recent piece for Voices from Solitary, Harris explores the unique barriers to developing a mindfulness and meditation practice in solitary confinement. Solitary Watch.

In her seventeen years incarcerated, Kwaneta Harris has spent the last eight years in solitary confinement in Texas state prison and is currently held at Lane Murray Unit. Her powerful and shocking stories expose how the intersections of gender, race, and place contribute to state-sanctioned, gender-based violence. As a mother and former nurse, she has a personal commitment to illuminating how the experience of being incarcerated uniquely impacts women. When she is not writing, Harris shares liberatory knowledge on reproductive justice with the other women in her unit.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. A recent report from the Council for Court Excellence (CCE) paints a grim picture of the ongoing use of solitary confinement by the Washington, D.C., Department of Corrections. The majority of people at the D.C. jail are being held in pre-trial detention, meaning they’ve yet to be convicted of a crime. However, despite submitting multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests, CCE was only able to obtain limited information on the number of people in and conditions of solitary confinement at the jail. Washington City Paper | According to the report 1,273 residents were held in solitary confinement before having a Disciplinary Hearing in fiscal year 2021. While the total number of people held in solitary confinement is unknown, 35% of residents housed in Administrative Restrictive Housing, Disciplinary Restrictive Housing, Pre-hearing Detention, or protective custody have an active diagnosis of serious mental illness. Additionally, 29 people were released from Disciplinary Restrictive Housing directly into the community in fiscal year 2021. Council for Court Excellence.

William Blake lived in solitary confinement for 34 years while incarcerated in the New York state prison system, an experience he wrote in the viral essay “A Sentence Worse Than Death.” In 2021, he was released into the general population without receiving any transitional support or mental health treatment for the three decades of torture he endured while in solitary. According to Blake, now 60, six months ago he experienced a psychotic break from the untreated effects of solitary which landed him back in isolation at Attica Correctional Facility. In the latest entry in our Voices from Solitary series, Blake writes about New York prison officials’ failures to adhere to the civil protections promised by the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act. Solitary Watch.

In 2021, after 34 years of living in solitary confinement in New York state prisons, William Blake was released into general population. Solitary Watch first encountered Blake, now 60, back in 2013, when we published his essay “A Sentence Worse Than Death.” The essay received more than half a million hits on this site alone, and has been widely reprinted and translated into several languages. Since that first publication, Blake has continued to write about his experience in solitary confinement.

Black Americans make up a disproportionate amount of the U.S. prison population and there are even larger disparities when it comes to the population of solitary confinement. As we close out Black History Month, an article from award-winning incarcerated journalist Steve Brooks provides insight into the relationship between the historic oppression of Black people and solitary confinement. Through his own narrative experience of solitary, Brooks examines the unique impact the practice has on the lives of Black people. Solitary Watch.

More than 9 percent of Black men in Pennsylvania were imprisoned in solitary confinement for 15 days or more before they reached the age of 32, according to a 2021 study conducted at Columbia University. The study’s authors believe their findings likely apply to the broader United States as well. This means nearly one in ten Black men nationally has subjected to conditions that have been defined as torture by the United Nations, and shown to cause psychological damage, suicide, and PTSD.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is being called “an agency in crisis” after a series of recent reports by government watchdogs. Washington Post | One, by the Justice Department’s Inspector General, revealed that the prison system struggles to keep people in its facilities alive. According to the report, 344 people died by homicide, suicide, accidents, and drug overdoses while in BOP custody between 2014 and 2021. Of the incarcerated people who died by suicide, about half died in solitary confinement. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General | A separate IG report criticizes the agency for “shoddy record keeping, falsified documents and destroyed logs related to the special housing units used to discipline inmates.” DOJ Office of the IG | Finally, a comprehensive report by the Government Accountability Office found that “federal prisons haven’t addressed longstanding concerns about overuse of solitary confinement,” despite a host of recommendations put forth in earlier reports and studies. Included in the GAO report was an October 2023 “snapshot” showing that about 12,000 people, or 8 percent of the federal prison population were, in solitary confinement–considerably higher than the national average. Additionally, the report found that, in 2022, Black Americans made up approximately 59 percent of people in federal solitary confinement although they only account for 38 percent of the total prison population. Government Accountability Office.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. In a recent report, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General found that the Federal Bureau of Prisons routinely subjects incarcerated people to “conditions that put them at heightened risk of self-harm, drug overdoses, accidents and violence.” After analyzing 344 deaths, the inspector general found “unsafe conditions” in nearly all cases. The New York Times | Between 2014 and 2021, 187 people died by suicide while in BOP custody and nearly half of the suicides occurred while the person was isolated in “single-cell [solitary] confinement.” Additionally, the majority of people who died by suicide were classified as the lowest level of mental health risk, meaning they had no treatment plan in place. The Guardian | What’s more, BOP policy only requires an in-depth review after a suicide occurs and the decentralized nature of the system makes implementing policy recommendations nearly impossible. United Press International | The 100-page report ends with a series of recommendations for reducing and more accurately reporting deaths in custody, and sets a deadline of May 15, 2024, for the BOP to report on progress. U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. A new study by Harvard-affiliated researchers and the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to “flout international human rights standards” by locking immigrants in solitary confinement en masse. According to the study, approximately 3,000 immigrants were held in solitary confinement by ICE in 2023. Between 2019 and 2023 the number of detained immigrants in solitary confinement with mental health issues skyrocketed from 35 percent to 56 percent. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists | Despite a 2013 directive intended to limit the number of immigrants placed in solitary, especially for people with vulnerabilities, the report found that ICE oversaw more than 14,000 placements in solitary confinement between 2018 and 2023. Although the average duration of time in solitary was 27 days, researchers documented 682 cases lasting over 90 days and 42 lasting over one year. In addition to documenting the extent of ICE’s reliance on solitary confinement, the report makes several recommendations which “serve as a roadmap to completely phase out the use of solitary confinement in immigration detention.” Physicians for Human Rights.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. In a 42-9 vote, the New York City Council voted to override Mayor Eric Adam’s vetoes of legislation banning solitary confinement. The new legislation requires all people incarcerated in New York City jails to have a minimum of 14-hours out if cell time in a communal setting and limits confinement to 4 hours immediately following an incident or confrontation. In response to Adams’ veto City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams stated “we cannot allow the human rights and safety crisis on Rikers to continue by maintaining the status quo of failed policies and practices.” ABC News | Although Mayor Adams continues to claim that solitary does not exist in New York City, incarcerated people and advocates state that this isn’t true. According to Jennifer Parish of the Urban Justice Center, “there are units where people are locked down 23 or 24 hours a day.” One attorney described the conditions of these units as filthy and infested with insects and rodents. Spectrum News NY1.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. Nebraska children are spending increasing amounts of time in solitary confinement. According to a recent report from the state’s Inspector General on Child Welfare, in the last year the number of children in solitary in the state’s youth facilities has increased by 44%. The report suggests state-run detention centers and treatment facilities are not adhering to state laws limiting the use of solitary confinement for children. One 16-year-old told his family that he has been in and out of solitary confinement throughout the duration of his incarceration, at one point spending a week confined alone in his room. In another case, a 14-year-old in Lancaster County spent 129 out of 133 days in solitary. While facility officials state that prolonged confinement is only used in rare cases, data indicates otherwise. Flatwater Free Press.

Dillion Compton was only 16 years old when he was first tried and convicted as an adult in Texas. While incarcerated Compton spent almost nine years in temporary and long-term solitary confinement, and he has been on Death Row for the last five years. In a recent essay, Compton describes solitary confinement as “a world of un-natural, debilitating pressure,” and discusses how he copes with the mental and physical effects of his current circumstances. Solitary Watch.