Solitary Confinement

United Nations Condemns US Over Torture & Injustice

November 30, 2014 Ed Pilkington, www.theguardian.com Educate! Guantanamo Bay, Immigration, Police abuse, police brutality, Racism, Solitary Confinement, Torture

The United Nations issued a report on torture by the United States and it should be quite an embarrassment to every American. Not only is the US violating international laws against torture in its military actions and treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, but the report also criticized the violation of US laws against torture. The report noted the widespread police brutality common in the United States and the lack of accountability for police who mistreat people. The report also criticized the mistreatment of prisoners held in solitary confinement as well as botched executions. The UN also concerns over the mistreatment of immigrants, expedited deportation without adequate due process and lack of adequate protection for asylum seekers. . The report is an indictment of government in the United States at every level. The UN criticized the United States for not cooperating with the investigation and providing full information.

On Trial For Protesting Solitary Confinement

November 14, 2014 Victoria Law, www.solitarywatch.com Resist! Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement

Are people in prison allowed to stand up for their rights? Or does all organized resistance to inhumane prison conditions amount to rioting? Five men—Andre Jacobs, Carrington Keys, Anthony Locke, Duane Peters and Derrick Stanley—will stand trial in a case that may determine how Pennsylvania’s justice system answer that question. The trial was scheduled to begin today, but the court issued a continuance until February 17. All five had been held at the Restricted Housing Unit (RHU) at SCI-Dallas, a prison in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. In the RHU, men are locked into their cell for nearly 24 hours a day. People can be sent to the RHU for violating prison rules, including various nonviolent infractions.

NY Inmates Sue Rikers Over Solitary Confinement Rollover Minutes

November 1, 2014 RYOT, www.ryot.org Resist! Law, Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement

NEW YORK (AP) — Inmates held in solitary confinement at Rikers Island as punishment for violations during previous stints in jail are suing to stop the practice, known as owed time. A class action lawsuit filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court says inmates are unduly placed in 23-hour confinement for breaking jailhouse rules in previous detentions, sometimes years earlier. For example, if an inmate is sentenced to a month in solitary confinement but is released or transferred before completing it, he can be forced to serve the remaining time during his next incarceration. The practice, which experts say is unique to New York City, is described in the lawsuit as arbitrary and unfair because it doesn’t allow for a hearing or other rights normally afforded under the internal disciplinary process.

A Mother Protests Solitary Confinement

October 31, 2014 Victoria Law, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! California, Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement

By 2011, SHU prisoners had had enough. They declared a hunger strike, demanding an end to these policies and conditions. Over a thousand people, including Johnny, joined in. Although not the first time SHU prisoners have gone on hunger strike, this particular call came at a time when prison organizing was intensifying. Less than a year earlier, in December 2010, people in a dozen Georgia prisons united across racial lines to go on work strike. Their demands included wages for their labor, educational opportunities, decent health care, nutritious meals and improved living conditions. In Illinois, activists were on the verge of closing the notorious Tamms prison, where men spent years in extreme isolation. Across the nation, lawsuits against inhumane prison conditions were filed — and won.

Political Prisoners In The Sacrifice Zone Of Empire

October 28, 2014 Nozomi Hayase, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Political Prisoner, Solitary Confinement

Abu-Jamal and Hammond, two men with very different backgrounds share much in common. Both were placed in prolonged solitary confinement, which the UN Special Rapporteur on torture called “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and may amount to torture.” Since his arrest in March 2010, Hammond was regularly cut off from contact with his friends and family and was more than once in solitary. Abu-Jamal has spent the last 30 years in prison, almost all of it in solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s death row before prosecutors agreed in 2011 to reduce the sentence. They both have always held strong commitment to social justice. Hammond revealed secret collusion of corporations and the state to engage in unconstitutional spying on human rights activists.

Jeremy Hammond Spent Nearly Two Weeks In Solitary

October 28, 2014 Free Jeremy, www.freejeremy.net Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Solitary Confinement

We received word last night that Jeremy had been placed in the Segregated Housing Unit (SHU), also known as solitary confinement. He had previously been placed in solitary confinement during pretrial detention. Make no mistake: We firmly believe Jeremy has been placed in solitary confinement as retaliatory punishment for filing complaints against the prison for withholding his mail. The prison had begun rejecting books and even legal material related to Jeremy’s own case. Jeremy had written that he was willing to take his grievances to the highest possible level in order to see them resolved. Because we feel this is a retaliatory measure, calling the jail or jail officials may be seen as aggression and may provoke the prison to further retaliate against Jeremy.

Bronx Protesters Demand Justice For Death Of Mentally Ill Inmate

June 29, 2014 Aviva Stahl, www.gothamist.com Resist! Mental Illness, New York City (NYC), Prison, Protest, Solitary Confinement

When 39-year-old Bradley Ballard was found naked on the floor of a mental health observation unit on Rikers Island last fall, his body was covered in feces and a rubber band was tied around his genitals. He had been held in isolation for seven days after making a lewd gesture at a female guard. On June 3, the Medical Examiner declared Ballard’s death a homicide, finding that he had been denied access to medication despite being diagnosed with both diabetes and schizophrenia. The AP previously reported that while guards looked into Ballard’s cell repeatedly in the days leading up to his death, they declined to enter, and when his door was finally opened on September 10, Ballard was too weak to move. He only received one visit from mental health staff, which lasted about 15 seconds. Ballard’s primary cause of death was listed as diabetic ketoacidosis, brought on by a lack of insulin. Thus far, however, no Correction officers have been fired or indicted in relation to Ballard’s death. Yesterday afternoon, about twenty-five people protested outside the Bronx District Attorney’s Office to demand criminal prosecution in Ballard’s death.

Documentary On CA Prisoner Hunger Strikes

June 24, 2014 Lucas Guilkey, www.indiegogo.com Organize! California, Fundraising, Prison, Solitary Confinement

This campaign is raising funds on behalf of California Prison Focus, a verified nonprofit. The campaign does not necessarily reflect the views of the nonprofit or have any formal association with it. All contributions are considered unrestricted gifts and can't be specified for any particular purpose. What? On July 8th 2013, California prisoners launched the largest prison hunger strike in United States history. Thirty thousand men—one quarter of all CA state prisoners—refused food in a united message against the use of indefinite solitary confinement. Many were willing to starve themselves to death and refused food for 60 consecutive days in defense of their basic human rights, such as access to sunlight and being able to hug their family. "We prisoners of all races have united to force these changes for future generations," Arturo Castellanos wrote from the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit. The U.N. Special Rapporteur defines solitary confinement for more than two weeks as a form of psychological torture, yet California routinely isolates its citizens for 10, 20, even 40 years—not for acts of violence but for possessing cultural symbols and political literature.

Solitary Confinement Threatened By Litigation

June 5, 2014 Erica Goode, www.nytimes.com Resist! Court, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Solitary Confinement

More than 200 inmates at Pelican Bay, California’s toughest prison, have spent over a decade locked in windowless 8-foot-by-12-foot cells for 22 hours or more a day. Dozens more have been in solitary confinement for 15 years — or even longer. But in a ruling this week, a federal judge in Oakland, Calif., agreed to consider whether, as a lawsuit against the state’s corrections department maintains, holding prisoners in such prolonged isolation violates their rights under the Eighth Amendment. Legal experts say that the ruling, which allows inmates at Pelican Bay who have been held in solitary confinement for more than a decade to sue as a class, paves the way for a court case that could shape national policy on the use of long-term solitary confinement. “It seems that the judge is going to decide the broad policy questions involved here,” said Jules Lobel, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which originally brought the suit on behalf of 10 inmates in the security housing unit at Pelican Bay. Without class-action status, any decision in the lawsuit could have been restricted only to those plaintiffs and not the broader policy.

Protestors Rally Against Prison System

May 6, 2014 Kyle Hughes, www.troyrecord.com Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Protest, Solitary Confinement

Opponents of prison “mass incarceration” and solitary confinement held a protest Monday led by Cornel West, a philosophy professor and media celebrity whose resume includes acting in the “Matrix” movies “When it comes to the Jim Crow Jr., the ‘New Jim Crow’ system, we say it is a crime against humanity,” West said in a fiery speech outside the state Capitol. “That’s what it is. Solitary confinement is torture, it is a crime against humanity to lock folks up when 60 percent of them are there for soft drugs.” He was referring to the 2010 book, “The New Jim Crow,” that argued U.S. society is disproportionately locking up blacks and labeling them as criminals to perpetuate a racial caste system. The book said about a third of young black men in the U.S. are in prison or on parole or probation, with incarceration rates higher than other industrialized nations. “Everybody knows 12 percent of those on the chocolate side, 12 percent of those on the vanilla side of flying high in the friendly skies every week taking drugs, but 65 percent of the convicteds (on drug offenses) are chocolate,” he said. “That just lets us know that the legacy of white supremacy is still operating in America. “But it’s not just that, it’s also a class issue. Everybody knows that it not just our precious white vanilla brothers and sisters, but if middle-class young folk of any color were going to jail at the same level of intensity as our precious poor brothers and sisters disproportionately chocolate, there’d be a town-hall meeting every week. It’d be on ABC, NBC, MSNBC — maybe even Fox News would have to carry it.”

20 Detainees Released From Solitary

April 9, 2014 Not1More, www.notonemoredeportation.com Resist! Solitary Confinement, Strike

This morning, 20 detainees being held in solitary confinement at the Northwest Detention Center in retaliation for engaging in a hunger strike were released from segregation, due to the pressure of litigation. The released detainees include 25-day hunger striker Jesus Gaspar Navarro, who had been placed in solitary confinement following a stay in medical isolation after ending his historic strike. The ACLU of Washington and Columbia Legal Services had filed a temporary restraining order and injunction on behalf of these individuals, seeking a court order to halt the ongoing retaliation against detainees engaged in the hunger strike and related activities. Those released are happy to be out of isolation. The individuals released had been in solitary confinement since March 27, when United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers implied that detainees could meet with an assistant warden to discuss their reasons for being on hunger strike.

The U.S.’s 64-Square-Foot “Torture Chambers”

October 21, 2013 Pam Johnson, Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Solitary Confinement

Authorities in each state have a myriad of euphemisms for the practice: administrative segregation, secure housing units (SHUs), “supermax” facilities, protective custody. Whatever the language, critics say the basic conditions remain the same: extreme isolation and sensory deprivation for years at a time. According to a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the restrictions imposed in “maximum security” facilities often “exceed the fathomable. In Pennsylvania’s most restrictive units, for example, prisoners have all the usual supermax deprivations plus some that seem gratuitously cruel: they are not permitted to have photographs of family members or newspapers and magazines.”

Angola Three Inmate Fighting For Release After Cancer Diagnosis

September 25, 2013 Ed Pilkington, www.theguardian.com Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Solitary Confinement

Herman Wallace, a former member of the Black Panther movement who was held in solitary confinement in Louisiana for more than 40 years, is fighting a desperate legal battle to be released from prison having been diagnosed with liver cancer and given just a few more weeks to live. Wallace, 71, has petitioned the federal courts in Louisiana pleading with them to set him free so that he can spend his last days in hospice care.

My Friend Todd Ashker: History Of A One-Sided Dialogue

August 23, 2013 Denis O'Hearn, www.zcommunications.org Strategize! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Hunger Strike, Solitary Confinement

The statement called on young people to “take the same mentality and skills we have used to hustle drugs, bang our hoods and promote our crews to unite in a powerful movement to demand dignity, respect and equality for all our people.” Todd Ashker is a major mover in the movement for peaceful change in California’s prisons and on its streets. I think one could say the same of the other three men who develop and sign statements from the Short Corridor Collective, as well as many others who support them. There are similar people who are locked up in solitary confinement all across the United States. It is not just a violation of the Eighth Amendment to keep them there. It is a waste that we do not find a way to utilize and encourage the talents and energies of men like Todd Ashker. We as a people are poorer for it.

Open Letter To Gov. Jerry Brown: Stop Torture In California Prisons

August 3, 2013 Staff, www.stoptortureca.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Solitary Confinement, Torture

Well over ten thousand adult prisoners are currently being held in some form of solitary confinement in California prisons – 80,000 in total across the United States. Among the worst form of solitary confinement is the indefinite and long‐term, extreme isolation of the Security Housing Units (the SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison, California’s “supermax”. Locked in a 11’7” x 7’7” windowless concrete box/cell for at least 22 ½ hours a day, day in day out, year after year, prisoners endure without sunlight, fresh air or human touch. In contrast to every other system in the United States, prisoners can’t even receive a phone call unless a family member has died. Over 500 prisoners have been locked down in the Pelican Bay SHU for over 10 years. About 80 of them have been in solitary for over 20 years and at least two prisoners have been isolated for over 40 years. This is a policy that condemns to permanent life long isolation.

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