For Solitary Watch readers who are inspired to take action against the pervasive practice of solitary confinement, there are numerous avenues and resources available. Across the country, groups and individuals are involved in education, legislative advocacy, grassroots organizing, and direct action around this key human rights issue.
Below is a curated selection of national organizations and state campaigns that offer a starting point for getting involved in the movement to end solitary confinement. Beginning soon, Solitary Watch will also include action alerts in our weekly roundup of news on solitary confinement. Sign up here to receive the newsletter in your inbox every Wednesday.
National Campaigns
ACLU Stop Solitary Project
Spearheaded by the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) National Prison Project, this initiative aims to limit and abolish the use of long-term solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and juvenile and immigration detention centers. On their page, you can find advocacy toolkits, campaign dos and don’ts, model stop solitary legislation, and more.
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Amend at UCSF
Amend at UCSF is a public health and human rights program that works in prisons to reduce their debilitating health effects on residents and staff, while also joining policy makers and community leaders to advance decarceration strategies and a better, new system of accountability and healing in the U.S. They focus on health-focused culture-change initiatives, staff training, public education, advocacy, and policy-oriented research.
Center for Constitutional Rights
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One of the issues they fight is mass incarceration. By combining cutting-edge litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications, CCR works to empower those who have been imprisoned, support movements begun by prisoners, and foreground their stories and voices in CCR’s work. Check out their fact sheet: “Solitary Confinement: Torture in the U.S. Prisons.”
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Federal Anti-Solitary Taskforce
Convened by leading nationwide experts on solitary, the Federal Anti-Solitary Taskforce works to fully end solitary confinement in federal prisons and detention facilities, and end solitary in states and localities as well. The Taskforce is comprised of civil rights, human rights, faith, and health organizations and leaders, including people who have survived solitary confinement, people who have family members in solitary confinement, and their allies.
National Religious Campaign Against Torture
The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) mobilizes people of faith to end torture in U.S. policy, practice, and culture. To achieve its mission, NRCAT engages in grassroots organizing, public education, and state and national policy advocacy. By promoting restorative alternatives and human rights, the Ending Torture in U.S. Prisons campaign works to end the use of solitary confinement. NRCAT also coordinates a National Network of Solitary Survivors; all formerly incarcerated individuals who have experienced solitary confinement are encouraged to join.
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Solitary Watch
Solitary Watch is a nonprofit watchdog organization that works to uncover the truth about solitary confinement and other harsh prison conditions in the United States by producing high-quality investigative journalism, accurate information, and authentic storytelling from both sides of prison walls. Solitary Watch’s mission is to spur public debate and policy change on an underreported humanitarian crisis by promoting awareness, creating accountability, and shifting narratives. Solitary Watch also offers direct support and vital human contact to hundreds of individuals in solitary through its Lifelines to Solitary pen-pal program.
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Stop Solitary For Kids
The Stop Solitary for Kids campaign worked to safely reduce and ultimately end the dangerous practice of solitary confinement for kids in juvenile and adult facilities. The campaign was a partnership between four national juvenile justice reform organizations: Center for Children’s Law and Policy, Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University, Council of Juvenile Justice Administrators, and Justice Policy Institute. Inactive as of 2023, the website remains a source for resources on the solitary confinement of youth.
Unlock the Box Campaign
Unlock the Box is a national advocacy campaign aimed at ending solitary confinement in all U.S. prisons, jails, detention facilities, and juvenile facilities, and bringing the United States into full compliance with the UN’s Mandela Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners within 10 years. They pursue this goal by working simultaneously on national, state, and local levels with solitary survivors, family members, advocates, community and faith groups, legislators, and others dedicated to ending state-sponsored torture.
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State Campaigns
Arkansas
Based in Arkansas, DecARcerate has organized individuals and partner organizations to advocate for numerous bills aimed at limiting the use of solitary confinement. In 2021, they helped pass HB1470, which bans solitary confinement for pregnant juveniles and places restrictions on its use for pregnant adults. The long-term goal is to eliminate solitary confinement and replace it with incentive-based and program-rich alternatives and build a statewide organizing effort around this goal.
California
A coalition of organizations including Disability Rights California, Immigrant Defense Advocates, NextGen California, Initiate Justice, California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, California Families Against Solitary Confinement, UC Berkeley Underground Scholars, and the Prison Law Office have come together to support passage of the California Mandela Act (AB 280). The bill would limit solitary confinement to 15 consecutive days or 45 days in a six-month period, and ban it altogether for youth, elderly people, and individuals with disabilities.
Connecticut
Stop Solitary Connecticut Coalition
Led by the Stop Solitary Connecticut Coalition, campaign efforts focus on passing the PROTECT (Promoting Responsible Oversight & Treatment and Ensuring Correctional Transparency). The Act is comprehensive and aspirational, providing a legislative vehicle to: stop extreme isolation, end abusive restraints, protect social bonds, promote correctional officer wellness, shut down CT’s supermax, and ensure correctional oversight and accountability.
District of Columbia
DC Justice Lab’s campaign efforts focus on advancing legislation that significantly reduces reliance on solitary confinement and the use of Black Box restraints in local detention facilities and ensuring that policymakers, organizers, and the public understand that the use of solitary confinement does not make incarcerated people safer or healthier.
Georgia
Co-led by RestoreHER and the Southern Center for Human Rights, this advocacy campaign to end solitary confinement in Georgia is in its early stages. In 2021, they’ve focused their efforts on coalition-building, strengthening relationships with survivors of solitary confinement and other justice advocacy organizations,” or if you’d rather you can make it match the other one, for consistency.
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Louisiana
Louisiana Stop Solitary Coalition
Louisiana Stop Solitary Coalition focuses on policy changes within the Louisiana Department of Corrections (DOC), local jails, and juvenile facilities to implement policies that reduce the use of solitary confinement for everyone. In 2020, they changed solitary confinement law in Louisiana for the first time in 150 years, banning its use for currently and recently pregnant people. In 2021, they achieved a phone call policy for people held in solitary in DOC facilities. The campaign will continue to leverage the resources and expertise of those who have litigated and collected data, with the experience of those who have experienced solitary firsthand and are in the best position to lead on this issue.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts Against Solitary Confinement
Massachusetts Against Solitary Confinement (MASC) helped pass MA’s strongest criminal law reform bill in decades, which included significant changes to the state’s solitary confinement policies and practices. The Dept. of Corrections has failed to implement the mandates. New legislation filed this session will make the legal requirements explicitly clear and effectively end solitary confinement in MA.
Maine
Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition
Committed to ethical, positive, and humane changes in Maine’s prison system, the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition is a statewide group formed in 2007 to improve conditions for inmates, former inmates, their families, victims of crime and others. One of their ongoing campaigns is “Ending Solitary Confinement in Maine.”
Michigan
The goal of the Open MI Door campaign is to end solitary confinement in all Michigan prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilities, bringing the state into full compliance with the UN’s Mandela Rules. Utilizing a survivor/family-led coalition, we seek to implement safe alternatives to segregation.
Nebraska
Campaign efforts led by ACLU-NE ended the horrific overreliance on juvenile solitary confinement. The new law bans the use of room confinement, except to eliminate substantial, immediate risk of harm, and requires release from confinement as soon as the risk is resolved. The campaign is now focused on the implementation of the law and expanding reform to the adult system.
Nevada
Led by ACLU-NV, campaign efforts focused on ending solitary confinement in Nevada have been successful in limiting the practice of solitary in juvenile facilities, and within the Department of Corrections. They focus on ensuring that legislation related to ending solitary is properly implemented while also studying and evaluating the use of solitary confinement in local adult facilities to evaluate whether legislative and/or regulatory changes are necessary and work to expand the law to local facilities.
New Jersey
New Jersey Prison Justice Watch
New Jersey Prison Justice Watch has focused on the passage of the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act. In 2019, they successfully passed the bill. They have now moved into the implementation phase of their legislative campaign, which will involve several avenues of focus: influencing the development of regulations, continuing public engagement and education, and building the “scaffolding” of institutional oversight.
New Mexico
Campaign efforts led by ACLU-NM have focused on the passage of the Restricted Housing Act legislation. In 2019, they were successful in passing the bill that prohibits the use of solitary confinement for those under 18 and pregnant individuals. The Act also restricts the use of solitary confinement for people living with serious mental illness and requires jail and prison officials to collect data on who is housed in segregation and why. Finally, the new law includes a provision that requires all privately operated detention facilities to reveal the monetary amount of settlements related to conditions of confinement, including solitary confinement.
New York
Led by the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC), the #HALTsolitary Campaign resulted in the passage of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act in 2021. HALT limits solitary to no more than 15 days for all people, bans it for young people and other groups, and creates alternatives with at least 7 hours out of cell per day with rehabilitative and therapeutic programming. The Campaign is currently working toward HALT’s implementation, and also helped secure legislation in the New York City Council to fully end solitary confinement on Rikers Island and other NYC jails.
North Carolina
Stop Torture in NC Prisons Campaign
The Stop Torture in NC Prisons Campaign is aimed at ending the use of solitary confinement in North Carolina’s prisons. Convened by Disability Rights North Carolina, the campaign harnesses and targets the growing public energy around criminal justice reform. It utilizes existing partnerships and forges new collaborative relationships to place consistent pressure on the governor and state lawmakers to adopt its recommendations, effectively ending long-term solitary confinement in North Carolina.
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Pennsylvania
Led by the Human Rights Coalition (HRC), Solidarity Not Solitary PA is a campaign effort formed by decades’ worth of grassroots organizing inside and outside Pennsylvania prisons. HRC aims to empower prisoners’ families to be leaders in prison organizing and to teach them how to advocate on behalf of their loved ones in prison and expose the inhumane practices of the Department of Corrections. Through this campaign, HRC advocates for the passage of legislation that would eliminate long-term solitary confinement and prohibit the use of solitary for vulnerable populations.
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Rhode Island
Campaign efforts led by the Close High Side Campaign are focused on shutting down Rhode Island’s most restrictive facility, the High Security Center, also known as High Side. The Campaign goals are to 1) close the High Security Center, 2) end the state’s reliance on long term solitary confinement, 3) pursue solutions that are informed by the perspectives of people that have been most directly impacted, 4) prevent RIDOC from forcing High Security residents to transfer out-of-state, and 5) ensure no new beds and no new facilities.
Virginia
Virginia Coalition Against Solitary Confinement
The Virginia Coalition Against Solitary Confinement is the primary force in Virginia working to end solitary confinement. Their work consists of drafting and proposing bold legislation aimed at abolishing solitary confinement in Virginia prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilities. In addition to this, the coalition frequently advocates for independent oversight of state prisons. By uplifting voices from inside prison walls, the coalition will continue to educate stakeholders and push for a ban on solitary confinement.
Washington
Campaign efforts led by the ACLU-WA are focused on implementing the recent legislative victory—banning solitary of youth statewide, and beginning to tackle the adult solitary population through policy and legislative changes. They have recently led both litigation and policy work to address solitary confinement in adult and juvenile facilities across the state.
Action page created by Kilhah St. Fort
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