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<h2><font size=4><b>Confronting Torture in U.S. Prisons: A Q&A With
Activists/Journalists James Ridgeway and Jean Casella<br><br>
<br>
</b></font></h2><h5><b>By Angola 3 News, AlterNet<br>
Posted on June 13, 2011, Printed on June 14, 2011<br>
<a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/151279/confronting_torture_in_u.s._prisons:_a_q%26a_with_activists_journalists_james_ridgeway_and_jean_casella" eudora="autourl">
http://www.alternet.org/story/151279/confronting_torture_in_u.s._prisons%3A_a_q%26a_with_activists_journalists_james_ridgeway_and_jean_casella</a>
</b></h5><font size=3>Prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at
Pelican Bay State Prison in California have announced they are beginning
an indefinite hunger strike on July 1, 2011 to protest the conditions of
their imprisonment, which they say are cruel and inhumane. An
<a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/support-prisoners-on-hunger-strike-at-pelican-bay-state-prison">
online petition</a> has been started by supporters of the strikers. While
noting that the hunger strike is being “organized by prisoners in an
unusual show of racial unity,” five key demands are listed by
<a href="http://www.prisons.org/hungerstrike.htm">California Prison
Focus</a>:<br><br>
<i>1) Eliminate group punishments; 2) abolish the debriefing policy and
modify active/inactive gang status criteria; 3) comply with the
recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons
(2006) regarding an end to long term solitary confinement; 4) provide
adequate food; 5) expand and provide constructive programs and privileges
for indefinite SHU inmates.<br><br>
</i>Notably, Pelican Bay is "home" to the only US prisoner
known to have spent more time in solitary confinement than the 39 years
that Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3, have spent--since
April 1972. Imprisoned now for a total of 47 years and held at Pelican
Bay since 1990, <a href="http://hugopinell.org/">Hugo Pinell</a> has been
in continuous solitary for over 40 years, since at least 1971--probably
even since the late 1960s. Pinell was a close comrade of Black Panther
leader George Jackson, who organized a Panther chapter inside
California’s San Quentin Prison, similar to the prison chapter organized
by the Angola 3 in Louisiana.<br><br>
Journalist <a href="http://kiilunyasha.blogspot.com/">Kiilu Nyasha</a>
writes that on Aug. 21, 1971, the day of
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgErR9WGCCk">George Jackson’s
assassination</a>, “three prison guards and two inmate trustees were also
killed. Subsequently, six prisoners, including Hugo Pinell, were singled
out and put on trial. Reminiscent of the slave auctions, they were each
forced to bear 30 lb. of chains in a Marin courtroom after being charged
with numerous counts of murder and assault.” They became known as the San
Quentin Six. Johnny Spain, the only defendant to be convicted of murder,
was released in 1988, making Pinell the last of the San Quentin Six
behind bars, despite having being convicted of a lesser assault
charge
(<a href="http://www.hugopinell.org/a-freedom-fighter-to-board.htm">read
more</a>).<br><br>
Robert King, of the Angola 3, released in 2001 after 29 years in
solitary, has expressed support for Pinell, saying that he "is a
clear example of a political prisoner." In January 2009, Pinell was
denied parole for the ninth time, despite a clean record with no
write-ups for the past 25 years. Now, in 2011, with 27 years of
"clean time," Pinell is eligible for parole once again, but his
hearing has been postponed for six months and is expected later this
year.<br><br>
For decades now, human rights activists
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2011/02/15/case-closed-on-supermax-abuses/">
have criticized</a> the infamous Pelican Bay supermax prison. Journalists
James Ridgeway and Jean Casella, co-founders of the new
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/">Solitary Watch Web site</a>, are
similarly critical of conditions at Pelican Bay, and they argue that the
treatment of prisoners at Pelican Bay is a reflection of a widespread
human rights crisis throughout the US prison system.<br><br>
<b>Angola 3 News: How did you first become interested in the issue of
solitary confinement and ultimately become inspired to start Solitary
Watch?<br><br>
</b>Solitary Watch: We started Solitary Watch because this issue grabbed
us by the throats. The solitary confinement of tens of thousands of
prisoners may be the most grievous mass human rights violation that’s
taking place on American soil, yet it’s been largely concealed from and
ignored by the public, and seriously under-reported by the press.
<br><br>
Solitary confinement is a hidden world within the larger hidden world of
the prison system, and prisoners in solitary are an invisible and
dehumanized minority within the larger population of prison inmates in
general--who also remain remarkably invisible and dehumanized,
considering that they now number
<a href="http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/One%20in%20100.pdf">
nearly 2.3 million and constitute one in every 100 adults in this
country</a>.<br><br>
We don’t mean to sound self-righteous about any of this, because until
two years ago we were as ignorant about this subject as anyone. Like so
many other people, we were outraged by the abuses taking place at
Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, yet we knew relatively little about the abuses
happening here at home, in our own prisons and jails. What changed that
was
<a href="http://motherjones.com/special-reports/2009/03/angola-3-36-years-solitude">
Jim’s reporting for Mother Jones on the Angola 3</a>. To discover that
there were men who had been living isolated in 6 x 9-foot cells for
nearly 40 yearswell, that clearly shocked the conscience. <br><br>
That was the beginning of our education. We began to learn more and more
about this torturous netherworld of solitary confinement that exists, in
one form or another, in every state of the union. And we discovered that
there were activists and lawyers and scholars and prisoners’ families and
even a handful of journalists out there who were trying to draw attention
to the issue, but no centralized, comprehensive source of
information.<br><br>
<b>A3N:</b> <b>Can you please briefly tell us about your background
before Solitary Watch?<br><br>
</b>SW: Jim has more than 40 years of experience as an investigative
journalist, and Jean has been an editor for independent media and run
small nonprofit organizations. It seemed like together we had the skills
we needed to start up a web-based project that would serve as an
information clearinghouse on solitary confinement, as well as a forum for
whatever original reporting we might do on the subject. And we’ve been
fortunate enough to get some funding from several
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/support-solitary-watch-news/">generous
donors</a>. That was the genesis of Solitary Watch, which went online a
year and a half ago. <br><br>
<b>A3N:</b> <b>What is a SHU?<br><br>
</b>SW: SHU is just one of many euphemisms prison systems have developed
to avoid using the term “solitary confinement.” In California, it stands
for Security Housing Unit; in New York it is Special Housing Unit.
Elsewhere we see Special Management Units, Behavioral Management Units,
Communications Management Units, Administrative Segregation, Disciplinary
Segregationthe list goes on. There are nuances of difference among them,
but they all consist of 23- to 24-hour-a-day lockdown. Most of these
systemsincluding the federal Bureau of Prisonsdeny that they use
solitary confinement, even while they have tens of thousands of prisoners
locked alone in their cells for months, years, even decades.<br><br>
<b>A3N: When was the first SHU made?<br><br>
</b>SW: Solitary confinement was actually invented here in the United
States, in the early 19th century in Philadelphia, as a supposedly humane
alternative to things like floggings and hard labor. Prisoners were
locked up alone, with absolutely nothing to do but contemplate their
crimes, pray, and supposedly become “penitent”thus the term
“penitentiary.” Of course, nothing like that happened. The U.S. Supreme
Court looked at conditions in the Philadelphia prison in 1890 and found
that "A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a
short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next
to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others
still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were
not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient
mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the
community."<br><br>
For nearly 100 years after that, solitary confinement was rare; the
famous Birdman of Alcatraz spent six years in solitary, and that was
unusual. Things really began to change in 1983, when two guards at the
federal prison in Marion, Illinois, were killed by inmates on the same
day. That was the beginning of the notorious Marion Lockdown, where
prisoners were permanently confined to their cells without yard time,
work, or any kind of rehabilitative programming. <br><br>
<b>A3N: How have they developed since?<br><br>
</b>SW: Other prisons followed suit, and in 1989 California built the
first supermaxPelican Bay. There was a supermax boom in the 1990s, and
today, 40 states and the federal government have supermax prisons holding
upwards of 25,000 inmates. Tens of thousands more are held in solitary
confinement in lockdown units within other prisons and jails. There’s no
up-to-date nationwide count, but according to best estimates, there are
at least 75,000 and perhaps more than 100,000 prisoners in solitary
confinement on any given day in America. <br><br>
Solitary confinement has become the disciplinary measure of first resort,
rather than of last resort. Today you can be placed in solitary
confinement not only for violence, but for any form of “insubordination”
toward prison officials. Others are put there for having contrabandwhich
includes not only drugs but cell phones or even too many postage stamps.
Still othersincluding many of the juveniles in adult prisons--end up in
solitary for their own “protection” because they are targets of prison
rape. A lot of the men in Pelican Bay’s SHU are there because they’ve
been “validated” as gang members, based on the say-so of inmate
“snitches” who are rewarded for informing. The reasons are countless, and
sometimes absurd. In Virginia, a group of Rastafarian men was in solitary
for a decade because they refused to cut their dreadlocks, in violation
of prison rules. <br><br>
<b>A3N:</b> <b>What are effects of the SHU on prisoners’ health and
well-being?<br><br>
</b>SW: As <a href="http://www.yearten.org/">one prisoner</a> at the
Tamms supermax in Illinois said, "Lock yourself in your bathroom for
the next 10 years and tell me how it will affect your mind."
<br><br>
If it weren’t already obvious enough, research conducted over the last 30
years confirms solitary confinement has an extremely damaging
<a href="http://solitarywatch.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/fact-sheet-psychological-effects-of-solitary-confinement.pdf">
effect on mental health</a>. One study found that a single week in
solitary produced a change in EEG activity related to stress and anxiety.
There’s
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande">
evidence</a> that long-term isolation profoundly alters the brain
chemistry, and that longer stretches in solitary
<a href="http://www.prisoncommission.org/statements/grassian_stuart_long.pdf">
produce psychopathologies</a>including panic attacks, depression,
inability to concentrate, memory loss, aggression self-mutilation, and
various forms of psychosis--at a considerably higher rate than other
forms of confinement. Yet we have prison systems that insist they are
placing prisoners in solitary so that they can “learn self-control,” and
many cases where inmates are released directly from long-term isolation
onto the streets. Unsurprisingly, they have a notably higher recidivism
rate than other prisoners. <br><br>
It’s important to acknowledge, also, that a huge number of prisoners who
are placed in solitary suffer from underlying mental illness. After 40
years of cuts to funding for mental health care, prisons and jails in
generaland solitary confinement cells in particular--have become
<a href="http://www.thecrimereport.org/archive/locking-down-the-mentally-ill/">
America’s new asylums</a>. Prisoners are placed in solitary for being
disruptive, when what they are doing is simply exhibiting the untreated
symptoms of mental illness. One report by
<a href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1003/18.htm#_Toc51489492">
Human Rights Watch</a> found that in prison systems around the country,
one-third to one-half of the prisoners held in solitary were mentally
ill. Other studies have found that two-thirds of all prison suicides take
place in solitary confinement. <br><br>
There has been less research done on the physical effects of solitary
confinement, but evidence from recent court cases suggests a relationship
to things like extreme insomnia, joint pain, hypertension and even damage
to the eyesightwhich makes sense when you are talking about not being
able to walk or look more than ten feet in any direction for years or
decades on end. We will clearly see more evidence of health damage as
more and more prisoners grow old in long-term solitary
confinement.<br><br>
<b>A3N: The hunger strike at Pelican Bay will begin on July 1, and the
strikers have made <a href="http://www.prisons.org/hungerstrike.htm">five
demands</a>. Do you think these policies being protested are violations
of international human rights standards? Of domestic US laws?<br><br>
</b>SW: First, we want to say what a remarkable document this is,
remembering that it was written by a group of men who are largely unable
to communicate with one another or with the outside world, and who have
limited access to research materials. It’s a tribute to their
perseverance and dedication to their cause, as well as their
courage.<br><br>
Second, we should emphasize how measured and reasonable their set of
demands is. It draws heavily on the findings of the
<a href="http://www.prisoncommission.org/">Commission on Safety and Abuse
in America’s Prisons</a>, which was a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission
that studied U.S. prisons and jails. As one of its three major findings
on prison conditions, the Commission said that the growing use of
“high-security segregation” was counterproductive and often cruel. The
Pelican Bay hunger strikers have adopted the recommendations of the
Commission for reforming and limiting the use of solitary confinement.
Beyond this, they are simply asking for an end to group punishment and
guilt by association, which are used to confine prisoners to the SHU
indefinitely. And finally, they are asking for decent, nutritious food.
This is hardly a radical agenda.<br><br>
There’s no doubt that solitary confinement, as it’s practiced in the
United States at Pelican Bay and elsewhere, stands in violation of
international human rights standards, including the
<a href="http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html">UN Convention Against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment</a>, and the
<a href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/basicprinciples.htm">UN’s
Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners</a>. Recently, the
European Court of Human Rights
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2010/07/08/u-s-supermax-prisons-challenged-in-the-european-court-of-human-rights-and-fail-the-first-round/">
delayed the extradition</a> to the United States of several British
terrorism suspects, because of the possibility that they would be
sentenced to life in a supermax prison, which was deemed to violate the
European Convention on Human Rights
(<a href="http://angola3news.blogspot.com/2011/03/war-prisons-and-torture-in-us-uk.html">
read more</a>). <br><br>
Unfortunately, U.S. courts have been more reluctant to take a stand
against solitary confinement. We are not Constitutional scholars or even
lawyers, but to us it would seem obvious that long-term solitary, at
least, violates Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
However, the courts, with a few exceptions, have not found that to be the
case. The exceptions for the most part have to do with prisoners with
mental illness. <br><br>
In a few cases, courts have found that holding prisoners in solitary
violates their Constitutional right to due process, since they can be
placed in isolation based on a system in which prison officials act as
prosecutors, judge, and jury. Prisoners have no real opportunity to
defend themselves, and no way to “earn” their way out of solitary through
good behavior. That’s certainly the case at Pelican Bay, and it’s one of
the things the hunger strikers are protesting. <br><br>
At the moment there are two important cases pending in federal court,
which claim that long-term solitary violates the Constitution. One is the
case of the
<a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/life-permanent-lockdown">
Angola 3</a>, now in their 40th year of solitary in Louisiana; the other
is the case of
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2011/05/05/americas-most-isolatd-federal-prisoner-describes-10220-days-in-extreme-solitary-confinement/">
Thomas Silverstein</a>, who has spent 28 years in extreme solitary
confinement in federal prison under a “no human contact” order.<br><br>
<b>A3N: Looking beyond these specific demands, what are some other
characteristics of the Pelican Bay SHU?<br><br>
</b>SW: California is particularly bad when it comes to holding prisoners
in solitary confinement indefinitely based on highly questionable
determinations of gang status, which as we said are often based on
<a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/04w6556f">a system of
snitchin</a>g in return for various rewards. Otherwise, conditions
in Pelican Bay are similar to those in most supermax prisons and SHUs.
<br><br>
These prisons have made a science out of isolation. The cells usually
measure between 60 and 80 square feet, and those cells are a prisoner’s
entire world. They are fed through slots in the solid steel doors, and if
they communicate with prison staff, including mental health
practitioners, that also takes place through the feeding slot. If they’re
lucky they get to exercise one hour a day, alone, in a fenced or walled
“dog run,” and leave their cells a few times a week to take a showerin
shackles, of course. In some cells the lights are on 24 hours a day, and
there’s round-the-clock video surveillance. <br><br>
Prisoners may or may not be permitted to have visits. They may or may not
be allowed reading and writing materials, art supplies, or other things
to help them pass the time, and they may or may not have television, with
close-circuit programming supplied by the prison. At ADX, the federal
supermax in Florence, Colorado, they have black and white televisions
that actually had to be specially retrofitted for the Bureau of Prisons,
reputedly because they didn’t like the PR implications of prisoners
having color TV.<br><br>
In fact there’s a lot of concern about inmates being perceived as having
it “too easy”--so they often don’t have air conditioning in summer or
enough heat in the winter, and the food is barely adequate. Some states
still use “the loaf”made of a tasteless puree of foodsas punishment.
<br><br>
<b>A3N:</b> <b>For over 40 years, Hugo Pinell has been in solitary
confinement, most recently at Pelican Bay. Considering the political
context of solitary confinement in Pinell’s case, as well as that of the
Angola 3, what do you think this says about how prison authorities have
used solitary confinement as a political tool against prisoner activists
and organizers? Is the practice widespread?<br><br>
</b>SW: There’s no doubt that solitary confinement is widely employed
against prisoners who are perceived as representing any kind of threat to
the absolute power and control of prison authorities. This is true even
if inmates are seeking to organize for positive change and even if they
are completely nonviolent. <br><br>
In the case of Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, the two
still-imprisoned members of the Angola 3, and of Hugo Pinell at Pelican
Bay, we are talking about men who have had virtually clean disciplinary
records for several decades, and who are now in their sixties. The fact
that they continue to be held in solitary confinement clearly has
everything to do with their involvement as prison organizers.<br><br>
We have the warden of Angola, Burl Cain,
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2011/05/17/angola-3-mark-39-years-in-solitary-confinement/">
saying under oath</a> in a deposition that Wallace and Woodfox have to be
kept in solitary because they are still “trying to practice Black
Pantherism,” and if he let them into the general population they would
“organize the young new inmates” and “have the blacks chasing after
them.” And we have a prisoner in California being
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2010/06/16/prisoner-locked-up-in-solitary-based-on-reading-materials/">
sent to the SHU</a> simply for having reading materials written by George
Jackson and contact information for Hugo Pinell. <br><br>
But you don’t have to be associated with the Black Panthers, or indeed
any organized political group, to be punished for prison activism. In
Massachusetts, an inmate named
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2011/01/10/prison-whistleblower-condemned-to-solitary-confinement/">
Timothy Muise</a> was sent to solitary after he tried to expose a
sex-for-snitching ring run by guards at his prison; they said his offense
was “engaging in or inciting a group demonstration or hunger strike.” A
prison journalist in Maine named
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2011/02/03/maine-prison-whistleblower-exiled-and-isolated/">
Deane Brown</a> was isolated and eventually shipped out of state for
sending broadcasts called “Live from the Hole” to a local radio station.
<br><br>
Solitary confinement is routinely used to punish prison whistleblowers,
and to suppress nonviolent dissent and free expression. <br><br>
<b>A3N:</b> <b>How well do you think the mainstream and progressive media
have covered the issue of solitary confinement in prisons?<br><br>
</b>SW: Well, there has actually been some outstanding reporting on this
subject in the mainstream media. Of course there’s dreadful stuff as
well, like the “Lockup” and “Lockdown” TV series. But as far as print
media goes, there are a few of cases where journalism helped spur
grassroots movements against solitary confinement. We are thinking, in
particular, of the investigations by
<a href="http://www.bnd.com/2009/08/02/865377/trapped-in-tamms-in-illinois-only.html">
George Pawlaczyk and Beth Hundsdorfer</a> on Tamms supermax in Illinois,
by
<a href="http://www.portlandphoenix.com/features/top/ts_multi/documents/05081722.asp">
Lance Tapley</a> on Maine State Prison, and by
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2010/10/18/suicide-and-solitary-confinement-in-new-york-state-prisons/">
Mary Beth Pfeiffer</a> on suicides in New York’s
SHUs.<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande">
Atul Gawande’s 2009 article</a> in the New Yorker was excellent, as
well.<br><br>
In the progressive media, there’s been some powerful reporting by
<a href="http://www.progressive.org/mag_amcabu">Anne-Marie Cusac</a> in
The Progressive,
<a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/157896/guant%C3%A1namos-here-home">
Jeanne Theoharis</a> in The Nation, and
<a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/14/manning">
Glenn Greenwald</a> at Salon. And of course, Mother Jones has been
extremely supportive of Jim’s reporting on the Angola 3 case, and on the
broader issue of prison conditions as well.<br><br>
The problem we have with media coverage is that there isn’t nearly enough
of it. And it doesn’t get anything close to the attention it deserves or
produce the kind of outrage it should, considering the fact that this is
one of the major domestic human rights issues of our day. Our impression
is that the mediaincluding, to a lesser extent, the progressive mediais
simply reflecting how effectively prisoners have been marginalized in our
society.<br><br>
<b>A3N:</b> <b>Today, in the post-9/11 so-called “War on Terror” era, do
you think the US public supports the use of torture against US
prisoners?<br><br>
</b>SW: We do think that the public is tolerating the torture of
prisonerssome because they don’t know about it, others because they
simply don’t care. But we’d actually like to turn your question around,
because we believe that a tolerance for the torture of U.S. prisoners
helped to produce a tolerance for the torture of foreign terrorism
suspects, rather than vice versa. The “War on Crime” predates the “War on
Terror,” and places like Pelican Bay and ADX Florence made it that much
easier for Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and Bagram to exist. <br><br>
To discuss what produced this tolerance for torture in the first place,
we need to return to the point we made at the beginning of this
interview: Prisoners are today by far the most dehumanized members of our
society. This has been the case to some extent historically, but the
dehumanization has grown more intense since the advent of the War on
Crime, which dates back to the 1960s but really heated up in the 1980s
and 1990s. For at least the last 30 years, politicians from both parties
have been cynically exploiting public fears about crime to win elections,
and the prison population has grown by leaps and bounds with tacit public
approval. <br><br>
Racism clearly plays a role in all of this: A highly disproportionate
number of prisoners are African American, and a majority of people today
accepts the mass incarceration and abuse of black prisoners just as a
majority once accepted racial segregation and before that slavery. Again,
it comes down to depriving a certain group of people of their full
humanity. Once you do that, it becomes a lot easier to deprive them of
their basic human rights, not to mention their civil rights. <br><br>
<b>A3N:</b> <b>Strategically speaking, how do you think supporters of
human rights can best use media-activism to challenge the powerful forces
currently trying to convince the US public that torture is good policy?
What are key points that we should be making?<br><br>
</b>SW: When it comes to solitary confinement, we probably need to
emphasize different key points with different audiences. For those people
who already have a firm opposition to all torture, we simply need to
share information about the nature and widespread use of solitary
confinement, and try to bring this issue out of the shadows and into the
public square. The <a href="http://afsc.org/campaign/stopmax">American
Friends Service Committee</a> has shown real leadership on this issue,
and more recently the
<a href="http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights">ACLU</a> and the
<a href="http://www.nrcat.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=429&Itemid=311">
National Religious Campaign Against Torture</a> have been trying to draw
attention to solitary confinement, so that's a positive development. We
need to encourage people to see the torture of all U.S. prisoners as a
human rights issue just as pressing as the torture of Bradley Manning, or
of the captives at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraibbecause torture is torture,
and if you believe this, it shouldn’t matter whether or not the victim
has committed a crime. <br><br>
For those who think that prisoners are criminals who deserve whatever
they get, we can still emphasize the fact that solitary confinement is
not only cruel, but also costly and counterproductive. It can cost two to
three times as much to keep a prisoner in a supermax, rather than in the
general prison population. And it simply doesn’t “work,” in that it makes
prisoners more likely to re-offend.<br><br>
<b>A3N:</b> <b>You have just released the first print edition of Solitary
Watch. What are your future plans for this? Anything else coming up that
we should be looking for?<br><br>
</b>SW: We launched <a href="http://solitarywatch.com/print-edition/">the
print edition</a>, which includes just a small selection of our stories,
because we began receiving letters from prisoners nearly every day,
telling us about their own situations and asking for information.
Prisoners, of course, do not have Internet access, so we needed to become
more than just a web publication.<br><br>
In addition, we’re going to be publishing a series of
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/fact-sheets/">fact sheets</a> on
different aspects of solitary confinement; we’ve just posted the first
one, and there are many more to come. We just began shooting our first
video interviews with some survivors of solitary confinement. Along with
the writings we publish under
“<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/solitary-voices/">Voices from
Solitary</a>,” we hope the videos will help provide a forum for a group
of people who actually know what it’s like to be buried alive.<br><br>
<b><i>Angola 3 News is a project of the International Coalition to Free
the Angola 3. Visit
<a href="http://www.angola3news.com/">www.angola3news.com</a> for the
latest news about the Angola 3 and various media projects spotlighting
the issues central to their story, including racism, repression, prisons,
human rights, and solitary confinement as torture.<br><br>
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