Solitary Confinement

Let’s End Torture In U.S. Prisons

February 4, 2016 John Kiriakou, www.otherwords.org Create! Prison Industrial Complex, Prisons, Solitary Confinement, Torture

By John Kiriakou for Other Worlds - A prisoner is kept in a small cell — usually 6 feet by 10 — alone, for 23 hours a day. For one hour a day, he or she may be taken into a small cage outside, with the opportunity to walk in circles before being taken back in. Even the outdoor cage can usually be opened and closed remotely. The idea is to keep the prisoner from having any human interaction. Those who’ve been through it call it a “living death.” The United Nations calls it torture. The practice is widespread in the United States. And until recently, it was applied even to juveniles in the federal prison.

Newsletter: Defeating The Oligarchs

January 30, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Banks, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Ferguson, Finance and the Economy, Flint, health, Mining, oligarchy, Plutocracy, Solitary Confinement, TPP, Uranium, Water

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. People in the US are taught that the way to create change is through voting. But in reality, voting in the US is very limited and ineffective. In an article, “Don’t Count on Elections: Organize or Die” the authors examine the myriad of ways that elections fail to create change; how they are designed to place a middleman, your representative, between you and the change you want and how elections tend to reinforce the status quo rather than change it. They point to South Carolina where there have been numerous attempts to rid the state of the Confederate Flag, but it was not until an activist climbed up a flag pole and took it down, that the government finally acted. Direct action, at the right moment, was more powerful than elections.

Obama Bans Solitary Confinement For Juveniles

January 27, 2016 Brendan O'Connor, www.gawker.com Create! Ban, Barack Obama, Juveniles, Solitary Confinement

By Brendan O'Connor for Gawker - Writing in the Washington Post, President Obama has announced a ban on the use of solitary confinement for juveniles and as a punishment for low-level infractions. Last summer, the president ordered Attorney General Loretta Lynch to conduct a review of solitary confinement’s overuse in U.S. prisons. The report is now complete and has been released to the public. The president writes that he will adopt its recommendations.

New York Reforms But Does Not End Solitary Confinement

December 17, 2015 Christopher Mathias, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! New York (NY), Prisons, Solitary Confinement

By Christopher Mathias for The Huffington Post - Tonja Fenton spent 270 consecutive days in a 6-by-10-foot cell, alone for 23 hours a day. She was there for three infractions of prison rules: purchasing socks and a hair dryer for another inmate, mailing a sample of prison food to court as part of an official complaint, and for allegedly falsely accusing a guard of sexual assault. For these apparent transgressions, Fenton, like so many prisoners in the state and across the country, found herself in punitive, solitary confinement.

Update From Menard Prison Hunger Strike

October 4, 2015 Alice and Staughton Lynd, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Hunger Strike, Solitary Confinement, Torture

By Alice and Staughton Lynd for Popular Resistance. Menard, IL - On September 23, 2015, at least 19 (and possibly as many as 22) men in Administrative Detention at the Menard Correctional Center began a hunger strike that ended on September 28. It was nearly a week after the hunger strike ended before we received any mail from them. The following is a composite account based on what they sent us, written on the first and last days of the hunger strike. Alice Lynd. Day 1, September 23, 2015 “On 9-23-15, after filing multiple grievances dealing with my diet tray, indeterminate seg hearings, yard conditions as well as living conditions, . . . and no response or action taken, I declared a peaceful hunger strike. . . . I declared my hunger strike only after trying multiple ways to bring relief to my issues which were and still are being completely ignored.”

Advocates Rally To Keep Solitary Confinement In Spotlight

September 4, 2015 David Howard King, www.gothamgazette.com Resist! Solitary Confinement, Torture, United Nations

By David Howard King in Gotham Gazette - Last November he United Nations committee on torture found that the United States was not in compliance with its Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment because of excessive use of solitary confinement in prisons across the country. The UN found that use of solitary confinement of over 15 days amounts to torture. Nearly a year later New York state has no limit on how long an inmate can be held in solitary--some have served decades. With increasing focus on the conditions in prisons, New York is struggling to address flaws in its prison system that has led to deaths and that advocates say does irreversible mental and physical damage to inmates.

California Agreement Ends Solitary Purely Due to Gang Validation

September 2, 2015 Center for Constitutional Rights, www.ccrjustice.org Create! California, Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement, Torture

By Center for Constitutional Rights - Today, the parties have agreed on a landmark settlement in the federal class action Ashker v. Governor of California that will effectively end indeterminate, long-term solitary confinement in all California state prisons. Subject to court approval, the agreement will result in a dramatic reduction in the number of people in solitary across the state and a new program that could be a model for other states going forward. The class action was brought in 2012 on behalf of prisoners held in solitary confinement at the Pelican Bay prison, often without any violent conduct or serious rule infractions, often for more than a decade, and all without any meaningful process for transfer out of isolation and back to the general prison population. Ashker argued that California’s use of prolonged solitary confinement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and denies prisoners the right to due process.

Chelsea Found Guilty Of Infractions, Spared Solitary Confinement

August 20, 2015 Chelsea Manning Support Network, www.chelseamanning.org Resist! Chelsea Manning, Political Prisoner, Solitary Confinement, Torture

By Chelsea Manning Support Network - We are only $15,000 short on paying for Chelsea’s appeal! Please donate today. After 100k petitions were delivered to the Army yesterday, the secret disciplinary panel at Fort Leavenworth military prison sentenced Chelsea to 21 days of restrictions on her recreational activities, including no access to the gym, library or outdoors. Supporters delivering 100,000 petitions to Army officials the morning of Chelsea’s hearing. Chelsea Twitter Chelsea’s reactions, over the last 24 hours, to being found guilty of prison infractions. Chelsea doesn’t have Internet access in prison, so she tells us what to post during our regular phone calls with her. We won an important victory by keeping Chelsea out of “indefinite solitary confinement;” however, this ruling of guilty on all four absurd charges is not without significant ramifications. “Now these convictions will follow me through to any parole and clemency hearings, forever. "

Crackdown On Manning Intensifies Before Confinement Hearing

August 17, 2015 Deirdre Fulton, www.commondreams.org Resist! Chelsea Manning, Solitary Confinement, Torture

By Deirdre Fulton in Common Dreams - Military prison authorities are allegedly denying whistleblower Chelsea Manning access to the facility's legal library, just two days before a disciplinary board hearing that will decide whether she is placed in solitary confinement for what her supporters and lawyers say are innocuous offenses—like possession of a tube of expired toothpaste. As Common Dreams reported, the Chelsea Manning Support Network revealed last week that prison authorities are using trumped up charges—including "medicine misuse" and "prohibited property"—to silence Manning, who has become a Guardiancolumnist and outspoken advocate for transgender, privacy, and prisoners' rights during her incarceration. The disciplinary board hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, will take place behind closed doors, despite Manning's request that the proceedings be made public.

Social Worker Blows Whistle On Private Prison In Texas

July 28, 2015 Franco Ordoñez, www.mcclatchydc.com Resist! Families, Hunger Strike, Immigration, Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement, Torture

By Franco Ordoñez in McClatchy DC - Olivia López thought she’d be working with migrant mothers and children in a group-home setting when hired as a social worker at a Texas family detention center. But when she arrived at the concrete facility and the doors were unlocked to let her in, she was startled by the cacophony of cell doors clanging. “I walked in and thought, ‘oh my Lord, this is really a prison,’” she said. In an exclusive interview with McClatchy, López shared an inside perspective of troubling operations at the Karnes County Residential Center, which has been at the center of controversy over the Obama administration’s family detention policy. She described a facility where guards isolated mothers and children in medical units, nurses falsified medical reports, staff members were told to lie to federal officials and a psychologist acted as an informant for federal agents.

Solitary Confinement In NJ Immigration Detention Centers Overused

July 23, 2015 American Friends Service Committee, www.afsc.org Educate! Mass Incarceration, New Jersey (NJ), Solitary Confinement, Torture

An investigation of the use of solitary confinement in New Jersey’s immigration detention centers finds an unnecessarily harsh and unfair system that violates state and international standards. The report “23 Hours in the Box, Solitary Confinement in New Jersey Immigration Detention” is released by New Jersey Advocates for Immigrant Detainees*, a coalition of community-based groups that support immigration and detention reform, and NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic. The investigation examined hundreds of documents from public record requests and found that solitary confinement is applied far too often and far too long to immigrant detainees in New Jersey. Investigators also found an unnecessarily harsh system severely limiting due process and fraught with violations of state regulations and international standards.

What President Obama Didn’t Hear Or Smell At El Reno

July 21, 2015 Carl Takei, www.aclu.org Educate! Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex, Solitary Confinement, Torture

By Carl Takei in ACLU - From several years of touring prisons, I’ve learned they all have a distinctive and oddly similar smell: sweat, human misery, and grime — sometimes overlain, but never hidden, by the acrid odors of chlorine and other cleaning products. The sounds give you a sense of the different parts of the institution. Dorm-style general population units are a constant murmur of activity, with TV programs blending into the sound of people talking, playing cards, microwaving overpriced cups of noodles—anything to pass the idle hours, days, months, and years in custody that lay before them. I wish he had reached behind a solid steel door to shake the hand of someone in solitary confinement. Meanwhile, solitary confinement units are filled with the yells of those seeking help, the screams of those battling hallucinations, and the echoing metallic thuds of people banging their hands — or sometimes their heads — against the metal doors of their cells.

Family Of Prison Hunger Strikers Mobilize Against Solitary Confinement

July 17, 2015 Victoria Law, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement, Torture

By Victoria Law in Waging Non-Violence - “By our silence, this is how they’ve gotten away with decades-long isolation,” Dolores Canales told me as this year’s anniversary of the California hunger strikes drew close. In July 2011, Canales’s son Johnny and several thousand others incarcerated in the state’s Security Housing Units, or SHUs, went on hunger strike to protest the policies allowing them to be placed in 23-hour lockdown for an indefinite period of time. In the SHU, people are locked inside their cells for 23 to 24 hours a day. Although prison policy dictates that they be allowed outside for one hour each day, Canales and other family member report that their loved ones are often held in their cells for several days without respite, then allowed outside for a single five-hour stretch.

An End To Solitary Is Long Overdue

December 11, 2014 Marie Levin, www.counterpunch.org Organize! California, Human Rights, Law, Solitary Confinement

While the U.S. uses long-term solitary more than any other country in the world, California uses it more than any other state. It’s one of the few places in the world where someone can be held indefinitely in solitary. This practice is designed to break the human spirit and is condemned as a form of torture under international law. Despite these repeated condemnations by the U.N., the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is harshening rather than easing its policies, currently with three new sets of regulations. The administration’s iron-fisted strategy is emerging: project the appearance of a reforming system while extending its reach, and restrict the ability of prisoners and their loved ones to organize for their rights.

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