Kevin Sawyer, an incarcerated journalist, writes about what Black August means to him. Originating in 1979 in honor of the incarcerated activist George Jackson, Black August commemorates the legacy of Black liberation fighters, political prisoners, and revolutionary leaders, especially those behind bars. Sawyer writes that has observed Black August for 24 of his 28 years incarcerated, and has faced retaliation from San Quentin prison due to his own reading and writings on Black liberation. Sawyer says that as a Black man, Black August serves to remember and honor his fallen heroes and strengthen his conviction in the fight for liberation. Solitary Watch.

The following piece is written by incarcerated journalist Kevin Sawyer. For 24 out of his 28 years in prison, Sawyer has observed Black August, a month that commemorates the legacy of Black liberation fighters, political prisoners, and revolutionary leaders. Black August originated in 1979 to pay homage to George Jackson, a young Black man who was sentenced to one year to life in prison in California in 1960 for allegedly stealing $70 from a gas station. While incarcerated, Jackson became a leader in the Black Panther Party and the author of the bestselling book Soledad Brother. He served ten years at San Quentin and then at Soledad Prison, including seven and a half in solitary confinement—a tactic used to try and quell the influence of Jackson and other movement leaders. In August of 1970, after being accused of killing a white prison guard, Jackson was transferred back to San Quentin, where he was killed in a prison uprising a year later. The legacy of Jackson’s resistance lives on every year through the Black August tradition to “study, fast, train, fight.”

Solitary Watch published “Women in Solitary Confinement,” the eighth in a series of fact sheets that offer facts, analysis, and resources on a variety of topics related to solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and immigrant and juvenile facilities. The fact sheet states, “Solitary confinement is always harmful, but can be uniquely detrimental to incarcerated women, who enter prison with high rates of mental illness; past trauma; and other physical, medical, and psychological challenges that are worsened by time in solitary. Solitary Watch.

Today, Solitary Watch is publishing the eighth in a series of fact sheets that offer 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 Sophie Kane, is titled “Women in Solitary Confinement.”

Jack Jackson is a transgender man currently serving a 20-year sentence in Texas prison, and has been held for the past ten years in solitary confinement. When Jackson entered the Texas prison system in 2014, he was assigned to a woman’s diagnostic unit, and faced harassment from both officers and fellow prisoners. In the latest entry in our Voices from Solitary series, Jackson describes how he began to withdraw, which was only heightened by his placement in AdSeg, leading him to attempt suicide in 2014. Despite the harassment and threats of disciplinary action, Jackson remains determined as he leaves restrictive housing. Solitary Watch.

Jack Jackson is a transgender man currently serving a twenty-year sentence in Texas prison. Jackson has served eleven years of his sentence so far, including the last ten years in solitary confinement. In 2014, he attempted suicide while on work detail by running at the guards, hoping that they would shoot him. According to Jackson, he “was in a real bad place mentally… and just wanted to join [his] mother in death.” Instead, Jackson survived and was sent to the mental health crisis center. From there, he went to the psychiatric hospital unit where he underwent three months of intensive therapy before being sent to solitary confinement in the administrative segregation unit, or AdSeg, due to an “attempted escape” classification.

Solitary Watch has openings for Fall 2024 interns. We offer interns an opportunity to gain writing, research, and outreach skills while working on an important domestic human rights issue. Especially encouraged to apply are individuals with a background or interest in journalism, law, and/or criminal justice; those interested in utilizing media to advance social justice; and individuals directly impacted by the criminal legal system. For details and application instructions, please visit https://solitarywatch.org/about/internships/.

Felix Sitthivong, an incarcerated journalist and recipient of a Ridgeway Reporting Project grant from Solitary Watch, describes the suppression of cultural awareness groups in Washington state prisons, which mislabel these organizations as gangs. Sitthivong is the former president of the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group (APICAG), which has provided community and resources for many incarcerated individuals, along with a deep history of activism and organizing. The Department of Corrections has attempted to suppress the APICAG for years, resulting in Sitthivong spending multiple periods in solitary confinement. Despite these efforts, Sitthivong writes, he remains resolute in building community with his API brothers. Prism.

Felix Sitthivong is a journalist and organizer currently incarcerated in Washington State. He received a grant from Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project to write his latest story, published in Prism, in which he reports on the history, importance, and repression of cultural awareness groups in prison. As the former president of the prison’s Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group, Sitthivong illustrates how these cultural preservation groups build community and create safe spaces for healing. Yet the Washington State Department of Corrections has long claimed these groups were “gangs,” and targeted their deep roots in activism and organizing, sometimes placing their leaders in solitary confinement or transferring them to different prisons. The following is an excerpt from his article, which can be read in full at Prism. — Valerie Kiebala.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. New York City Mayor Eric Adams issued an executive order that suspended parts of a new solitary confinement ban, Local Law 42. The order prevented a variety of checks on confinement, including a four-hour limit on detaining people in “de-escalation confinement” and other limits on restraints. AP News | The move, which came the day before Local Law 42 was set to go into effect, is the latest update in a months-long debate over NYC jail reform. The City Council already approved the bill twice—the second time to override Adams’ veto—and proponents of the legislation criticized Adams’s order. “This is a shameful tactic, another desperate abuse of power by this administration to try and ignore laws it opposes,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said. Daily News.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. Before dropping out of the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, candidate Kamala Harris took a strong position against solitary confinement. Harris was one of only three out of thirteen Democratic candidates who accepted an invitation to attend the first town hall organized by formerly incarcerated people, held at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The Marshall Project | There, and in her criminal justice platform for 2020, she promised to “end solitary confinement, but ensure alternative therapeutic and rehabilitative mechanisms are available to protect the safety of individuals in prisons and of prison staff.” Kamala’s Plan to Transform the Criminal Justice System and Re-Envision Public Safety in America (2019) | As a U.S. Senator from California, Harris co-sponsored legislation to limit solitary confinement in immigration detention, as well as an early version of Sen. Dick Durbin’s bill to reform (but not end) solitary in federal prisons. | Earlier in her career, while serving as Attorney General of California, Harris had a mixed record, at best, on criminal justice and prison reform. On solitary confinement specifically, she supported legislation to limit solitary in juvenile detention. But under her leadership, the state’s Department of Justice initially pushed back hard against a landmark lawsuit (Ashker v. Brown) to end indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement in the state’s adult prisons, before finally settling the case in 2015. Truthdig.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. On July 11, with unanimous bipartisab suppot, the U.S. Senate passed the Federal Prison Oversight Act, which aims to overhaul oversight of the Bureau of Prisons. The bill has already passed in the House, and now goes to President Biden’s desk. The legislation comes after years of controversy and crisis emerging from the federal prison system, including issues with sexual abuse, understaffing, and unsafe conditions. The text of the bill provides for “Creation of an inspections regime for the Bureau of Prisons,” which, among other things, would demand that prisons provide the Inspector General with information on “the policies and practices relating to the use of single-cell confinement, administrative segregation, and other forms of restrictive housing” as well as “lockdowns at the facility.” The bill now goes to the President’s desk to be signed into law. H.R. 3019 | Solitary Watch’s Katie Rose Quandt recently published an exposé of the rampant use of solitary confinement in the BOP. The American Prospect.

For Solitary Watch readers who are inspired to take action against the pervasive practice of solitary confinement, the Resources section on our website (see top menu) now includes Resources for Action. This curated selection of national organizations and state campaigns offers a starting point for getting involved in the movement to end solitary. We will also periodically be featuring Action Alerts as part of this weekly roundup—see below for the first of these alerts. Solitary Watch.

For Solitary Watch readers who are inspired to take action against the pervasive practice of solitary confinement, the Resources section on our website (see top menu) now includes Resources for Action. This curated selection of national organizations and state campaigns offers a starting point for getting involved in the movement to end solitary. Solitary Watch.

The most recent fact sheet in our series covers children in solitary confinement. “Solitary confinement causes serious physical, neurological, and psychological harm to adults, and has even more dire effects on children, whose minds and bodies are still growing and developing,” the fact sheet states. “The United Nations classifies solitary confinement as cruel and inhumane treatment that often rises to the level of torture, and has called for a complete ban on placing children in solitary. Despite this fact, thousands of kids experience isolation every day in adult jails and prisons and in juvenile facilities.” Solitary Watch.

Today, Solitary Watch is publishing the seventh in a series of fact sheets that offer 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 Ella Whittaker, Abigail Gorman, and Ashanti Bruce, is titled “Children in Solitary Confinement.”

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. After spending more than 22 years in solitary confinement, Frank De Palma is advocating for an end to the practice. He co-wrote a memoir about his experiences, “Never to Surrender!” and testified before the Nevada Legislature on solitary’s damaging effects on his mental health, self-perception, and social interactions. Journalist Natalia Galiczca profiled De Palma, detailing his journey from an arrest as a teenager, through years of degrading solitary confinement, to his release and ongoing recovery. “Occasionally, he’ll walk across the street to a nearby food market for iced tea,” Galiczca writes. “Or just step outside his door to feel the sun against his skin.” In January 2024, Nevada became the third state to restrict solitary to 15 consecutive days or less. Deseret News.

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:. Of the nearly one in six transgender people who report experiencing prison or jail, most will also face violence and solitary confinement while incarcerated. Despite knowing the disproportionate harm faced by transgender incarcerated people, their voices often go unheard. “People are the experts of their own lives,” says Kenna Barnes, advocacy manager for Black and Pink National, “Society often sees people who have been incarcerated—or who are incarcerated—as folks who don’t know what they need. And they certainly do.” In a recent series of interviews, the Vera Institute of Justice asked five transgender people about their experiences being incarcerated. The interviewees described facing abuse and being placed in long-term solitary confinement for punishment or “protection,” and called for more humane treatment. Ky (he/him) recalled: “I would lash out when they would say things to me. Then I realized that they would do this just so they could bring charges on me to take me to lockdown in a solitary confinement cell. I would be in lockdown for a month at a time. For a year, I was in and out of lockdown. Sometimes they would turn the lights on and leave them on forever as a way to irritate people. Or they would just leave you in complete darkness. You could go a day, or two days, without them turning the lights on. You had no light except the little light coming in under your door. When we were in lockdown, we would scream to each other through the vents, like, ‘Hey what are you doing over there?’ We would try to slide notes across the floor to other cells, just to have some human contact. If the officers saw us slipping paper under the door, they would step on it and throw it away, or they would get it and read it in front of everybody.” Vera Institute of Justice.

Incarcerated writer and Ridgeway Reporting Grant recipient Kwaneta Harris shares her experience with women’s solitary confinement in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Harris highlights the rampant sexual abuse against women and girls inside TDCJ prisons perpetrated by staff and maintained through threats of solitary confinement. Beyond intimidation, Harris exposes how staff at TDCJ prisons prey on those isolated by solitary and use the harsh conditions to further remove them from any supportive contact. However, despite the terrible environment of solitary and prison, chosen families provide support for those suffering inside. Scalawag Magazine.

The gifted and prolific incarcerated journalist Kwaneta Harris received a grant from Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project to write her latest piece, just published by Scalawag. Harris, who wrote this scathing expose from inside a solitary confinement cell, reveals how solitary units become fertile ground for the sexual abuse and exploitation of women and of girls as young as 16. What follows is an excerpt from that article, which can be read in full at Scalawag. Read more of Kwaneta Harris’s writing on Solitary Watch and on her website. —Jean Casella.