Solitary Watch

by Lizzie Twardock and Jean Casella

February 11, 2026

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: The cache of materials related to Jeffrey Epstein, released by the U.S. Department of Justice on January 30, includes video of the jail cell in which Epstein died on August 10, 2019. The video shows a fairly typical solitary confinement cell, located in the Metropolitan […]

by Sheila Hodges

February 4, 2026

New this week from Solitary Watch: In January’s edition of The Word, Solitary Watch Director Jean Casella calls for more attention to be paid to the deaths of incarcerated migrants, like Geraldo Lunas Campos, amid national outrage over the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Between January and October of 2025, 20 people died […]

by Jean Casella

January 30, 2026

The Word from Solitary Watch for January 2026 This commentary is the latest in The Word from Solitary Watch, our series of dispatches by Solitary Watch staff and contributors. • The spectacle of Americans being gunned down by masked ICE agents on the streets of Minneapolis has, rightly, shocked the nation and the world, and […]

by Lizzie Twardock

January 28, 2026

New this week from Solitary Watch: The Alabama Solution, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2025, has been nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. The film, which highlights the “horrifying realities of life inside Alabama’s prisons,” was made possible by incarcerated activists who documented the terrible conditions from inside prison using […]

by Katie Rose Quandt

January 26, 2026

This story was published in collaboration with Truthout and the Appeal. Grainy footage, filmed with contraband cell phones, forms the backbone of The Alabama Solution, a 2025 Oscar-nominated documentary that exposes the horrifying realities of life inside Alabama’s prisons. Throughout the film, shocking videos from incarcerated activists Raoul Poole, Robert Earl Council (who goes by […]

by Juan Moreno Haines

January 23, 2026

“How can we subject prisoners to unnecessary solitary confinement, knowing its effects, and then expect them to return to our communities as whole people?” —Barack Obama addressing the need for solitary confinement reform in 2016. When I was senior editor for San Quentin News, it was rare to find articles in mainstream media outlets showing […]

by Sheila Hodges

January 21, 2026

This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement: Sonya Reed was placed in solitary confinement after her daughter raised $11,000 on GoFundMe for a sick stray cat who lived on Reed’s unit and provided emotional support. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice claims that she was placed in solitary confinement due to an […]

by Sara Vogel

January 14, 2026

New this week from Solitary Watch:  As the new year begins, we want to thank all of the donors who gave during our annual fundraising campaign. Thanks to your generosity, we qualified to receive full matching funds from NewsMatch and the Public Concern Foundation! We are deeply grateful to all of our donors for your […]

by Voices from Solitary

January 8, 2026

Russell Kerr is currently incarcerated in the Texas state prison system. Out of his 37 years of incarceration, Kerr spent 23 years in “super seg.” Super segregation units are high-security housing areas where incarcerated men spend up to 23 hours per day in solitary confinement.   Despite having spent almost four decades in what he describes […]

by Sara Vogel

January 7, 2026

New this week from Solitary Watch:  Solitary Watch is honored to announce that award-winning incarcerated journalist Kwaneta Harris has joined our team as a part-time Senior Writer and Editor. A former nurse, business owner, and expat, Harris now writes from the depths of the largest state prison in Texas. Harris’s writing shines a light on […]

by Sara Vogel

December 31, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  We’ve chosen five stories published in 2025 that exemplify what makes Solitary Watch unique, vital, and indispensable—but we hope you’ll explore our website to find hundreds more. We also hope you will join the small legion of Solitary Watch readers who make this work possible by supporting it with […]

by Jean Casella

December 28, 2025

When Solitary Watch was founded in 2009, there was nothing else like it out there. Solitary confinement was the best-kept secret of the U.S. criminal justice system—a shadow world that was inhabited by upwards of 100,000 people, yet managed to remain out of sight of the American public, and resolutely off-limits to the press. Over more […]

by Sara Vogel

December 24, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch: In exciting funding news, we’ve just received a second matching funds grant, from The Public Concern Foundation. For the next $4,000 given before December 31st, all donations will be TRIPLED, and we couldn’t be more grateful. That means a gift of $50 now is actually $150 to Solitary Watch! […]

by Jean Casella

December 22, 2025

LGBTQ+ people face disproportionate rates of violence, abuse, and psychological trauma while incarcerated. Often, this results in being sent to solitary confinement, either as alleged “protection,” as punishment for their gender expression and personal relationships, or as retaliation for acting in self-defense and filing grievances.

by Jean Casella

December 18, 2025

Friends: This is really exciting for us. We’ve just received a second matching funds grant from The Public Concern Foundation. TRIPLE MATCH! That means a gift of $50 now is actually $150 to Solitary Watch! As a small operation, we don’t have the resources to spend all year fundraising—this end-of-year push with NewsMatch is the […]

by Sara Vogel

December 17, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  Only two weeks remain for all donations to Solitary Watch to be doubled, thanks to NewsMatch—the matching funds program for nonprofit newsrooms that only happens once a year. This kind of matching funds program is not only rare, but it’s critical to our mission: the funds we raise now will have […]

by Jean Casella

December 15, 2025

There’s Still Time to Help Us End the Torture in U.S. Prisons and Jails. This is the only time of year for matched donations. All donations are deeply valued, and until midnight on Wednesday, December 31st, all donations up to $1,000 will be doubled through the NewsMatch program. Please consider making a tax-free, end-of-year donation today. •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  • Tomorrow Morning, […]

by Sara Vogel

December 10, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  Our latest end-of-year appeal focuses on the Lifelines to Solitary project, the only pen pal program specifically for people held in solitary confinement—providing someone on the outside who listens and responds to their daily struggles, their ideas and interests, heartaches and hopes. Please consider supporting these unique and vital […]

by Jean Casella

December 9, 2025

For tens of thousands of people locked away in U.S. prisons and jails, the extreme deprivation and isolation of solitary confinement causes unimaginable suffering. One person living in solitary described his existence to us as “a soul-destroying loneliness that never ends.” This kind of isolation causes so much pain. It severs people from any kind of […]

by Sara Vogel

December 3, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  The deadline to submit an application for the 2025 Fall/Winter round of the Ridgeway Reporting Project has been extended to December 31. The project offers grants and editorial support for incarcerated journalists for stories about solitary confinement. If you know someone who may be interested, please share the full […]

by Kwaneta Harris

December 2, 2025

Today is #GivingTuesday, and our appeal for support comes directly from incarcerated writer Kwaneta Harris, Contributing Writer for Solitary Watch and recipient of a grant from our Ridgeway Reporting Project. Kwaneta is now widely published in leading media outlets, and was named Prison Journalist of the Year by the Society of Professional Journalists—achievements made all […]

by Sara Vogel

November 26, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  The latest appeal in our annual fundraising campaign describes the “soul-crushing loneliness of solitary confinement,” and points out that “the more than 100,000 people currently in solitary in prisons and jails are victims of the largest incidence of mass torture in the United States today.” Solitary Watch is working […]

by Jean Casella

November 20, 2025

In our overly busy, hyper-connected, screen-centric world, the idea of “alone time” holds a powerful appeal. Solitude and silence are seen as things that create space for relaxation and self-awareness—things to be sought out and savored. But in the years since I co-founded Solitary Watch, I’ve learned about another kind of “alone” that, when I […]

by Sara Vogel

November 19, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  In funding news, all donations to Solitary Watch through the end of the year are doubled, thanks to NewsMatch—the annual matching funds program for nonprofit newsrooms. This is the only time of year we explicitly reach out to readers for support, and with every dollar doubled (up to $1,000 […]

by Sara Vogel

November 12, 2025

New this week from Solitary Watch:  “The High Cost of Solitary” is the eleventh in Solitary Watch’s series of fact sheets that offer information, analysis, and resources on a variety of topics related to solitary confinement. Depending on the facility, solitary units cost between tens and hundreds of millions of dollars per year—approximately three times […]

by Jean Casella

November 7, 2025

Friends, We know how tough these times are for so many. So many things—things we’ve counted on, thought of as immutable—feel completely upside down. That’s a hard world to live in, and maybe, like us, you’ve become no stranger to despair. But we’re still here. And we’re grateful you are, too.Your support—and impact—today will be […]