Today we issued the following press release. We are grateful for the generosity of the Vital Projects Fund and of readers like you, who make it possible for us to support the work of incarcerated journalists. We also are grateful for the courage and tenacity of these 16 individuals, who must overcome myriad obstacles and risks to carry out investigative reporting behind bars. Finally, we are grateful to be able to contribute to the legacy of our late founder, James Ridgeway, for whom the Ridgeway Reporting Project is named.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. In 2021, a woman named Melissa approached the FBI with a complaint against FCI Dublin, a federal prison for women in California. What followed was a year-long probe by the FBI and a bipartisan investigation by the U.S. Senate. According to their report, over the last decade Federal Bureau of Prison employees—including FCI Dublin’s warden—have sexually abused incarcerated women in at least two-thirds of federal women’s prisons. BOP staff have the power to “place someone in solitary confinement, whittle away opportunities for good behavior and early release, or prevent visitation,” if they do not comply. As writer Natalia Galicza points out, these revelations come nearly five years after the advent of the #MeToo movement, demonstrating how the experiences of thousands of women can be excluded simply because they are incarcerated. The Deseret News.

Solitary Watch Senior Contributing Writer and Editor Juan Moreno Haines was denied parole for the second time last Thursday after serving more than 27 years in the California state prison system. In addition to his work at Solitary Watch, Juan has written for the Los Angeles Times, Oakland Post, LA Progressive, CalMatters, The Guardian, The Appeal, Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal, and UCLA Law Review, among others. He received a Writing for Justice fellowship from PEN American Center and a Silver Heart Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for being “a voice for the voiceless.” Today is his 66th birthday.

Today, Solitary Watch is publishing the fifth in a new series of fact sheets offering 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 Veronica Riccobene, is titled “Solitary Confinement & the Brain: The Neurological Effects.”

In the latest edition of our monthly dispatch “The Word from Solitary Watch,” director Jean Casella discusses the new report Calculating Torture, which undertakes the most complete count to date of people in solitary in prisons and jails, and lands on the shocking figure of 122,840. The numbers matter, she writes, in part because “every person in solitary confinement is a suffering human soul who, at the very least, deserves to be counted.” Solitary Watch.

Two weeks ago today, Solitary Watch and the Unlock the Box campaign published Calculating Torture, a report showing that at least 122,840 people are in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. Ours is the first report to provide a snapshot of all individuals in solitary confinement for 22 hours or more a day in all U.S. state and federal prisons and local jails, based on the best available data.

In an article co-published by Solitary Watch and The Nation, Victoria Law reports on the Maryland Mandela Act, which has stalled in the state legislature controlled by Democrats. The bill received “unprecedented” support from AFSC 3, the state’s corrections officers union, as well as the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a nonprofit consisting of police, prosecutors, and other law enforcement members. Even so, legislators tabled the bill for an interim study, leaving in limbo the fates of hundreds of individuals in Maryland held in solitary. Solitary Watch.

Frank De Palma spent more than 22 years of a 43 year sentence in solitary confinement at a Nevada state prison. Released at 62, DePalma faced homelessness and destitution. Despite the lasting psychological trauma and hardships caused by his time in solitary, he says he is “determined to speak out against the horror of solitary confinement.” In March 2021, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee of the Nevada Legislature in support of a bill that would limit the use of solitary confinement in the state. He serves on the Advisory Board of Social Workers & Allies Against Solitary Confinement. In collaboration with Mary Buser, author of Lockdown on Rikers, DePalma is in the process of publishing a book, Never to Surrender!, about his time in prison. —Sara Vogel.

This article is co-published with The Nation. Chloe Scheibe entered Maryland’s prison system in 2016. Unsure where to house a transgender woman in a male prison, officials placed her in administrative segregation. Administrative segregation, or ad seg, as it’s often called, is not intended for punishment, but nonetheless keeps a person in isolation.

A groundbreaking joint report from Solitary Watch ​and the advocacy coalition Unlock the Box shows that at least 122,840 people are locked daily in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails for 22 or more hours a day. Previous reports have offered an incomplete picture of how extensively the discredited practice is used and the number of people it affects. Often, these counts omit individuals who are held in solitary confinement in jails or who are held for less than two weeks.

Solitary Watch and Unlock the Box sent out the following press release on the morning of May 23, 2023. Washington, DC — The watchdog group Solitary Watch and the advocacy coalition Unlock the Box today released a groundbreaking joint report showing that at least 122,840 people are locked daily in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails for 22 or more hours a day.

Katie Rose Quandt, Senior Contributing Writer for Solitary Watch, explores how the isolation of suicide watch in prisons and jails can exacerbate trauma and suffering with sometimes fatal consequences. Quandt interviews a range of mental health experts and incarcerated individuals, including Anthony Gay, who was placed on suicide watch in an Illinois jail last year after engaging in multiple episodes of self-harm. “​​After years and years and years of being tortured [in solitary confinement]… it’s to the point where now I have a low tolerance for psychological pain but a high tolerance for physical pain… I never had these types of problems before I went to prison and solitary,” Gay said. The Nation | Solitary Watch supported the reporting and writing of this story.

In an article co-published with The Nation, Victoria Law reports on the serious discrepancy between the passage and implementation of New York State’s HALT Solitary Confinement Act. The law, which went into effect on March 1, 2022, strictly limits what acts allow prison officials to isolate someone for longer than three consecutive days or six days in a 30 day period. In the six month’s following the implementation of HALT, the DOCCS issued nearly 1,2000 disciplinary tickets that resulted in solitary confinement but did not meet the standards set by the law. On April 5, 2023, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit arguing “that DOCCS continues to subject hundreds of people to SHU sentences of more than three days for acts that are not explicitly listed by the law.” While advocates and currently and formerly incarcerated agree that there needs to be more vigilance regarding HALT implementation, Unlock the Box Campaign director Jessica Sandoval stated, “New York is better off with what is happening—even with problems in implementation—than they ever would have been without it.” Solitary Watch.

This article is co-published with The Nation. One year after New York’s HALT Solitary Confinement Act took effect, incarcerated people and advocates have filed suit against the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS, for failing to comply with the law. In 2021, after nearly a decade of...

In April’s installation of “The Word from Solitary Watch,” contributing writer Sarah Shourd writes about the extreme oppression of solitary confinement, and the incredible resilience of the human spirit in the face of it. Shourd highlights the organizing that has taken place inside prisons over the decades, from the Attica uprising in 1971 to the California prison hunger strikes in 2013. “Using torture to suppress dissent changes the nature of that dissent,” Shourd writes. “Sometimes, it makes it more visionary, and even harder to contain.” Solitary Watch.

In our society we’re taught to exile the “dark” or “shadow” side of our human nature even farther into the darkness. We push the hurt, wounded psyche into the depths of our shame, where we hope to hide it from everyone at all costs. Prisons...

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 population to restrictive housing. According to the lawsuit, between March 2018 and June 2022. Jail officials at Rikers Island illegally denied 4,400 people their right to due process. One plaintiff in the suit described how he was placed in solitary confinement for 485 days before his trial. New York Times | In a press release, Co-Director of the #HALTsolitary campaign Victor Pate applauded the plaintiffs for their courage and called for New York’s City Council “to pass Intro No 549, legislation with veto-proof supermajority support, to finally end solitary confinement in all its forms by all its names.” The legislation, which mandates proven safe alternatives to solitary confinement, was originally introduced in September 2022, but the Council has yet to schedule or hold another public meeting on the bill. #HALTSolitary Campaign Statement.

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 failed to follow its own solitary confinement policies. Though jail policy requires people in solitary to receive at least one hour out-of-cell each day, McLemore was allowed to leave his cell only three times during his 20 days in solitary. USA Today.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. On April 7, a federal District Court judge in Phoenix issued a sweeping Order and Permanent Injunction in response to “constitutional violations in the provision of health care and in housing certain prisoners in isolation” in Arizona’s state prisons. The class-action lawsuit, in which incarcerated people are represented by the ACLU National Prison Project, ACLU of Arizona, Prison Law Office, and Arizona Center for Disability Law, has gone on for a decade, and went to trial last fall after the court found the Arizona Department of Corrections was in contempt of an earlier settlement agreement. Arizona Republic While most coverage of the case has focused on what Judge Roslyn Silver called “grossly inadequate” medical and mental health care and subhuman conditions, it also addresses the state’s use of solitary confinement. The injunction places a two-month limit on incarcerated people being held in their cells for 22 hours or more, and bans the practice altogether for individuals under 18 and those designated as “seriously mentally ill.” Jensen v. Thornell In a draft of the injunction, Judge Silver found that Arizona keeps “thousands of prisoners in restrictive housing units where they are not provided adequate nutrition, nor are they provided meaningful out-of-cell time for exercise or social interaction. Defendants’ treatment of prisoners in restrictive housing units results in the deprivation of basic human needs.” ACLU Case File.

In “The Word from Solitary Watch” for March 2023, Jean Casella writes about how prisons are where America hides the problems it chooses not to confront, and how solitary confinement—often described as a “prison within a prison”—is where prisons hide theirs. Casella quotes from an essay by incarcerated writer Thomas Whitaker, as well as one by the late James Ridgeway, who wrote that the age-old practice of banishment “flourishes today in the American criminal justice system, where prisons and jails are the settings for a new kind of internal exile.” Solitary Watch.