Solitary Watch

by Jean Casella

November 18, 2022

Dear Donors, Readers, and Friends: This year, Solitary Watch has a chance to raise up to $20,000 in matching funds through NewsMatch, a collaborative fundraising movement to support independent, public service journalism like ours. We come to you once a year—and only once—to ask you to support the unique and vital work we do. With […]

by Mirilla Zhu

November 23, 2022

• A Data for Progress poll found that a bipartisan majority of voters favor placing strict limits on solitary confinement. Voters indicated that they would support banning all forms of solitary confinement beyond four hours per day by a +32 point margin, with 78% of Democrats, 61% of Independents, and 51% of Republicans expressing support. […]

by Voices from Solitary

November 23, 2022

A Note to Our Readers: Since its founding, Solitary Watch has maintained a correspondence with thousands of people in the deepest, darkest corners of the U.S. punishment system, cut off from human contact and out of sight of the public and the press. They have served as our eyes and ears as we report on […]

by Caitlin Konya

November 16, 2022

New from Solitary Watch:  • On November 16th at 6 PM EST, join Solitary Watch Director and Langeloth Grantee Partner Jean Casella in a discussion of new initiatives from Solitary Watch during the last Live with Langeloth of 2022.  • Solitary Watch has released a new fact sheet that documents the psychological effects of solitary confinement. According […]

by Jean Casella

November 15, 2022

Today, Solitary Watch is publishing the third 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 by Sara Rain Tree, covers the wide-ranging and devastating psychological effects of solitary. […]

by Mirilla Zhu

November 9, 2022

New from Solitary Watch:  • In an essay for our Voices from Solitary series, Raymond Williams writes about his experience as a 17-year-old incarcerated at Washington Corrections Center, where he was held in solitary confinement for a year. Now an adult incarcerated at the same facility, Williams makes the case that the legal system should […]

by Voices from Solitary

November 7, 2022

Raymond Williams, 42, is incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, Washington. Twenty-five years ago, he was sent to the same prison as a 17 year old. In this essay, Williams looks back on that first experience of being in adult prison. It was 1997, the year riots began in Washington prisons’ Intensive Management […]

by Caitlin Konya

November 2, 2022

New from Solitary Watch:  • Yesterday, Solitary Watch announced grants available to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated journalists to report on solitary confinement and other harsh and inhumane prison conditions from the inside out. The Ridgeway Reporting Project honors the legacy of the late investigative journalist and Solitary Watch founder James Ridgeway. The deadline for submissions is […]

by Jean Casella

November 1, 2022

Solitary Watch is accepting proposals for grants to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated journalists, with the goal of expanding public awareness and understanding of solitary confinement and other dangerous or inhumane conditions of confinement in U.S. federal and state prisons, local and tribal jails, immigration detention centers, and juvenile facilities. Through the generosity of the Vital […]

by Juan Moreno Haines

October 31, 2022

The good people who support change in our highly unjust criminal justice system often see a sharp divide between prison abolition and prison reform. Some who are dedicated to ending mass incarceration have been known to ignore or spurn what are commonly known as “conditions issues” like solitary confinement, prison medical and mental health care, […]

by Mirilla Zhu

October 26, 2022

New from Solitary Watch: • On October 27 at 8pm ET, Unlock the Box will host a virtual reading from the 2016 book Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement, edited by Solitary Watch staff, on Facebook and Instagram Live. The event will feature advocates and survivors of solitary, who will read […]

by Juan Moreno Haines

October 25, 2022

This op-ed by Solitary Watch Contributing Writer Juan Moreno Haines appeared yesterday in the Los Angeles Times. Advocates almost succeeded this year in curbing the use of solitary confinement in California’s prisons and jails. The California Mandela Act, named after the long-imprisoned South African president, received the support it needed in August to pass the […]

by Caitlin Konya

October 19, 2022

New from Solitary Watch: • Angela Hattery and Earl Smith share an excerpt from their groundbreaking new book “Way Down in the Hole: Race, Intimacy and the Reproduction of Racial Ideologies in Solitary Confinement.” In this book, Hattery and Smith reveal the ways in which the structure of solitary confinement produces and fuels the conditions of […]

by Solitary Watch Guest Author

October 13, 2022

What follows is an excerpt from the groundbreaking new book Way Down in the Hole: Race, Intimacy and the Reproduction of Racial Ideologies in Solitary Confinement, by Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith, with a foreword by Dr. Terry Kupers. Way Down in the Hole is the twelfth book authored by Hattery and Smith, professors […]

by Mirilla Zhu

October 12, 2022

• The Marshall Project reports that Alabama prisons are in “deadly disarray” one week into a work strike organized by incarcerated people. Two men have been stabbed to death since the strike began, and one man was allegedly beaten by guards and put in solitary confinement for his role in exposing the strike. Last week, […]

by Caitlin Konya

October 5, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: • In an essay in our Voices from Solitary series, Cesar Villa offers a searing account of living in prolonged solitary confinement in a Security Housing Unit, or SHU, at California’s notorious Pelican Bay State Prison. “We’re only here to die. The prison administration is paid to put us down. […]

by Voices from Solitary

September 30, 2022

Last night California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill known as the California Mandela Act (AB-2632), which had been passed by both houses of the state legislature. If signed into law, the legislation would have limited solitary confinement to 15 days and banned it altogether for vulnerable individuals in state prisons, local jails, and private […]

by Vaidya Gullapalli

September 29, 2022

In 2010, the human rights lawyer Juan Méndez was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. To many people in the United States, despite the domestic history of torture, the word carries associations with faraway places and despotic regimes. But Méndez, who was himself tortured in his […]

by Mirilla Zhu

September 28, 2022

• TIME reports that the Department of Justice undercounted nearly 1,000 deaths in United States prisons and jails during the last fiscal year. At a congressional hearing on the matter, Vanessa Fano testified about how her brother Jonathan died by suicide in 2017 after being placed in an isolation cell in East Baton Rouge Parish […]

by Caitlin Konya

September 22, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch: • Type Investigations and The American Prospect published an investigation by Solitary Watch contributing writers Katie Rose Quandt and Juan Moreno Haines. Quandt and Haines investigated San Quentin State Prison’s continued use of its infamous Adjustment Center, a death row unit designed for solitary confinement, to house people who have […]

by Juan Moreno Haines and Katie Rose Quandt

September 19, 2022

Today, Type Investigations and The American Prospect published an investigation by Solitary Watch contributing writers Katie Rose Quandt and Juan Moreno Haines. Quandt and Haines investigated San Quentin State Prison’s continued use of its infamous Adjustment Center, a death row unit designed for solitary confinement, to house people who have contracted or been exposed to […]

by Voices from Solitary

September 19, 2022

Mathew Davis is in prison at the Western Illinois Correctional Center, where he is serving a life sentence. He was first incarcerated nearly two decades ago, in 2004, when he was 24. He is now 42. Davis previously wrote for Solitary Watch about his experience surviving extreme isolation in prison. His past writings can also be […]

by Mirilla Zhu

September 14, 2022

New this week from Solitary Watch:  • Solitary Watch has released a new fact sheet that documents the collateral consequences of solitary confinement. According to the fact sheet, these consequences include “the destruction of family relationships, lasting financial hardship, exclusion from work and educational programing, additional time behind bars, increased recidivism, and even shortened life […]

by Jean Casella

September 13, 2022

Today, Solitary Watch is publishing the second 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 by Annalena Wolke, covers the seldom-addressed “collateral consequences” of solitary. As the fact […]

by Caitlin Konya

September 8, 2022

• An editorial in Tuesday’s Washington Post carries the headline: “Solitary confinement is torture. U.S. prisons should stop using it.” Citing solitary’s devastating psychological harms, the piece notes that progress in reducing solitary “is encouraging but piecemeal—and would benefit from federal leadership” from the White House. To date, the piece is the strongest statement against solitary […]

by Voices from Solitary

September 6, 2022

As millions of students across the country return to school, we are republishing this piece on what books mean to people living in solitary confinement. It originally came to us via the Real Cost of Prisons Project, which maintains an outstanding collection of Writing from Prison. The author is Joseph Stanwick, who sadly, passed in a […]