Journey to Justice Against Solitary Confinement

Cassie Gomez

SINCE THE BLACK Lives Matter (BLM) protests of 2020, issues of police and carceral reform have been the subjects of major debates within U.S. politics. Critiques of the nature of policing and prisons became mainstream to the point where abolitionist slogans like “Defund the Police” were the focus of electoral rhetoric and policy debates.(1)

Although the agitational power of BLM as a national catalyst of radical political change would dissipate, many grassroots organizations established in the wake of the protests continue to push for reform of the carceral system.

In the wake of BLM, I immersed myself in grassroots nonprofit organizing to advocate for the restriction and ultimate abolition of solitary confinement — a form of torture as practiced in the U.S. prison system.

Inspired by my previous activist work with Critical Resistance, a national abolitionist organization founded in 1997 to end the Prison Industrial Complex, and from my own experiences as a Black person who has faced police violence, I understand how policing and incarceration are disproportionately wielded against Black communities. The results are family separation, economic dispossession, and other collective traumas.(2)

Solitary confinement, as I will discuss, is a key mechanism in maintaining the system of mass incarceration. Along with my colleagues, our vision is to use arts and education to promote broad public narrative change while supporting state-level policy pressure campaigns across the country.

A major emphasis of our work is the humanization of the lives and experiences of incarcerated people through the mediums of theater, documentary film, and public history. Building on that work, I co-organized a national advocacy and education tour this fall called “the Journey to Justice,” which consisted of a mobile museum and book launch that crossed the country from September to November of 2025.(3)

The Stakes of Solitary

The tour operated under the purview of both the Unlock the Box(4) and Look 2 Justice(5) organizations, supported by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT).

The overarching demand of this organizational alliance is that all carceral jurisdictions apply the Mandela Rules, where solitary confinement should be used only in exceptional cases as a last resort, and in such rare cases no person should be kept in solitary for more than 22 hours a day and longer than 15 days.(6)

With the experiences of the tour in mind, I want to reflect on the stakes of solitary confinement and new conjunctures for the movement to end solitary in the context of the second Trump administration. I should note, however, that the views expressed here are my own analyses and do not necessarily represent the organizations named herein.

This topic lends itself to multiple frames of analysis, from the history of prisons to the psychological impacts of solitary confinement — the practice of isolating a person for hours, days, weeks, or even years in a cell of their own. More than 122,000 people are locked in solitary confinement on any given day in the United States. (Blackwell and Zalesne, Ending Isolation)(7)

Solitary confinement is also known colloquially as “the hole,” or more formally as punitive/disciplinary/administrative segregation, the Special Housing Unit (SHU) or Restricted Housing Unit (RHU), depending on the prison jurisdiction.

Although the size of a cell can vary from institution to institution, the average dimensions are 6 x 9 feet, with most containing a bed, toilet and sink.

A common standard is for people in solitary confinement to be let out for an hour a day (often to a shower facility and/or exercise yard, which may or may not have natural sunlight), but this is not guaranteed and can be restricted or revoked for arbitrary reasons.

Likewise, the reasons for being placed in solitary are often arbitrary, vindictive, or defying of logic. Over the course of the tour, I heard from survivors that acts ranging from helping another inmate with their legal case, writing the name of their home town on their shoes, having a bulb of garlic in their cell, or being unable to follow contradictory orders from different guards were all grounds for being placed in solitary confinement for extended periods.

Most defenders of the practice point to the supposed usefulness of solitary confinement in stemming violence. However, as argued in the book Ending Isolation: The Case Against Solitary Confinement, which was launched in conjunction with the tour, “there is no evidence that solitary confinement actually reduces violence.

“Instead, there are research findings that point strongly to the opposite conclusion, that solitary confinement worsens the problem of violence, both within prisons and in the public.” (Ending Isolation, 203)

“I used to think there was a timeline for when people lost their minds in solitary confinement. Six months, two years, maybe five. I was wrong. The descent into madness doesn’t follow a schedule. Even now, back in medium-security, I wake up some mornings thinking I’m still in that cell,” says Kwaneta Harris, a co-author of Ending Isolation. (63)

Prolonged solitary confinement is a form of torture, well-documented to cause devastating emotional, psychological and physical harm. Indeed, given the tendency for long periods of solitary confinement to induce psychosis, it also produces a danger to others the survivor is in contact with.

“Severe anxiety, panic, sleep problems (the most universally reported symptoms in solitary), depression, mood swings, memory problems, inexplicable anger, withdrawal, paranoia” are all potential outcomes of solitary confinement, including for those with no prior history of mental illness. (Ending Isolation, 64)

To reference just one example of the long-term mental harm of solitary, a 2019 study of incarcerated people conducted over two decades found that those who spent any amount of time in solitary were 80% more likely to die from suicide during their first year of release than formerly incarnated people with no experience of solitary. (Ending Isolation, 65)

Furthermore, those with preexisting mental illnesses are massively overrepresented in solitary given that serious mental illness can make it difficult to follow prison regulations, precipitate violence toward others, or make people more vulnerable to abuse. Usurpingly, solitary confinement serves to exacerbate pre-existing mental illnesses.

Furthermore, as Kwaneta Harris’s work emphasizes, solitary confinement exacerbates the crisis of sexual assault in prisons. Especially for incarcerated women, the physical isolation of solitary increases the likelihood of sexual assaults by guards, where coercive demands for sexual favors to receive even basic necessities and rights are a common pattern of abuse. (Ending Isolation, 122-34)

Eastern State Penitentiary

Despite the devastating human impact of solitary confinement, the practice was initially conceived as a more progressive approach.

Among our many stops on the Journey to Justice Tour, none were more iconic and important to the history of incarceration than Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Completed in 1829, this imposing building with a fortress-like façade (complete with turrets) is the birthplace of solitary confinement.

Prior to the 19th century, most criminal infractions and violations were dealt with by incarceration in unsanitary and overcrowded prisons or through public punishments, including flogging/whipping, the pillory, branding, mutilation, and execution.

In early 1800s Pennsylvania, under the considerable influence of the socially progressive and reformist tendencies of the Quaker movement, penal authorities sought a more humane and rehabilitative approach to criminal punishment.

Drawing heavily on religious practices of monastic solitude and repentance (hence the name “penitentiary”) through silent reflection, Eastern State pioneered a new form of prison discipline that would be known varyingly as the “separate system” or “Pennsylvania System.”(8)

Here, instead of corporal punishment or being crowded into filthy cells, the incarcerated person would be kept in solitary confinement and sensory deprivation for the duration of their sentence, unable to communicate with, hear or even see other inmates.

In this manner, and with cell blocks designed to be reminiscent of a church hall, it was hoped that the incarcerated would receive the divine and introspective inspiration to change their lives and renounce their criminal behavior. Rather than finding grace, unfortunately, many of those incarcerated at Eastern State were driven insane by the isolation.

Indeed, through his work as a journalist, Charles Dickens visited the prison in 1842 and lamented the poor conditions of the facility, deeming solitary confinement to be “cruel and wrong” and “immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.”(9)

Eastern State closed in 1971 and is now a museum, but the system of solitary confinement it developed would be adapted and spread across the land, such that it is now an integral aspect of carceral control in the United States.(10) This despite the system’s manifest failure to induce reform among the incarcerated.

In the words of one survivor of solitary, whose story was featured our tour, “solitary set me up to be bitter, not better.”

Disrupting Normalization

With the bus in the background, a panel of former prisoners, effected family members and activisty at the University of Michgan discussed launching a public campaign against the use of solitary confinement.

This unquestioned normalization of solitary confinement, so pervasive in American society, is what we sought to disrupt as we drove our mobile museum from coast to coast.

Starting in Oakland, California, we made our way through multiple stops in Washington State, Nevada, New Mexico, Louisiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, finally concluding the tour in Washington D.C.

The bus housed a screening room, library, multiple audio/visual displays, virtual reality headsets, artwork and artifacts from survivors of solitary (including individuals still incarcerated), and a mock solitary cell that we could deploy outside the vehicle.

We conveyed the grim realities of solitary and mass incarceration while presenting the testimonies of survivors and activists. With our goals of political education and intervention, a particularly important aspect of our tour was that in each stop we had, as a docent, a local survivor of solitary guiding guests through the museum.

The guides described their own experiences of solitary as well as activist work specific to the location. In fact, every location was chosen in coordination with local Unlock the Box affiliates and allies, with the intention to amplify their local movement campaigns.

 From college campuses to farmers’ markets to churches, the most common response among the general population was shock at the devastating toll of solitary confinement on the human mind and body, followed by anger that such a practice could be continuing in the 21st century. How could this not be deemed cruel and unusual punishment?

Among survivors, their allies and families, there was gratitude and encouragement through the dignity of being seen, since their stories and experiences are often erased from mainstream public consciousness. At the tour’s conclusion, our team felt it was one of the most impactful undertakings we have ever done, standing as an innovative and forward-thinking contribution to the movement to end solitary.

Some Tour Stops

To mention but a few examples of tour stops, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor we were part of a student-organized panel that spoke extensively on the disastrous mental and physical health outcomes of solitary. Roughly 60-80 students visited the bus and 40-50 attended the panel, which including testimony from solitary survivor Joe Carter:

“I used to hallucinate, see things, hear things, actually feel things, because I suffer from multiple sclerosis … Once I got in there [in solitary], every action I did, they just monitored me. Every action I did resulted in a write-up, which kept me there longer … I’ve seen a lot of individuals die from heart attacks, from aneurysm, people banging on your door, they can’t get help.”(11)

During the same panel, a mother described the story of her incarcerated son who, given past instances of violence in the prison, was cut off from contact with his family and placed in solitary confinement. From there his mental state deteriorated and, isolated from help and support, he committed suicide.

His story is far from the only one in Michigan, a state where the incarceration rate of 641 out of every 100,000 residents far exceeds the national average, a dynamic compounded by high racial disproportionality.(12) As such, Michigan was a high-priority state where our stop in Ann Arbor followed two tour stops in Lansing, at Michigan State University and the State Capitol.

In New Orleans we witnessed how our local partners drew directly from the organizing legacy of Albert Woodfox to build solidarity among survivors of solitary and push for carceral reform in Louisiana.(13)

Woodfox was a Black Panther and member of the Angola Three who spent over 40 years in solitary, perhaps the longest term of solitary confinement in U.S. history and a textbook case of the miscarriage of justice.

Our museum was able to provide the focus for a daylong outreach engagement between these movement activists and students at Loyola University in New Orleans. Through our conversations and advocacy, we saw how today’s anti-solitary movement has roots in the history of Black struggle, and especially the Black Panther Party’s demands to end police brutality and free Black people from jails.

The Movement Confronts ICE

Traveling across the country in late 2025 revealed that the movement is itself undergoing transformation in the face of Trump’s police-state expansionism and Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) roundups and sweeps.

My own introduction to this shift came early in the tour, amidst our stops in Washington State, when we visited the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, also known as the Northwest ICE Processing Center. A private prison operated by the GEO Group on behalf of ICE, it is one of the largest immigrant detention centers in the country.

Although not initially a scheduled stop of the tour, and not within the established anti-solitary alliance, organizers of a vigil at the detention center requested that we visit their encampment upon hearing that the museum bus would be in the area.

The most striking feature of the vigil is a tent filled with candles and flowers serving as a memorial to the two people known to have died in the detention center, preventable deaths due to abuse and medical neglect according the vigil organizers.(14)

While precise figures are difficult to ascertain, vigil organizers report widespread use of solitary confinement in the detention center, including against those who resist their conditions, attempt to organize other detainees, or are knowledgeable about their rights. Punishments are applied with even less transparency and accountability than regular prisons.(15)

It is jarring enough to learn about ICE’s activities through media and scholarship, but to actually watch the buses of a private prison contractor roll though the barbed wire fencing to drop detainees toward a potentially lethal fate is an altogether more visceral and unsettling experience.

As family members would arrive to the vigil through the fence to yell out for their loved ones, perhaps taken by masked ICE agents just hours before, I could not help but be reminded of the most terrifying periods of historical fascism and military dictatorship.

The scale and scope of ICE operations may be unprecedented, but their tactics of intimidation, punishment and authoritarian abuse of detainees are well-honed from the functioning of policing and prisons in the United States.

In fact, to bring in but one frame of analysis, the direct linkages between ICE and the pre-existing carceral state are readily apparent on the infrastructural level: Since Trump’s inauguration in 2025, ICE has been increasingly reliant on local jails and state and federal prisons to house detainees, reopening closed prisons in some cases, and expanding operational prisons in others.(16)

Put another way, the infrastructure of America’s longstanding carceral system is being readily deployed and repurposed to support ICE’s program of mass detention and deportation.

Under such conditions, it behooves ICE resisters and immigrant defenders to make links with and learn from the strategies and tactics of the anti-solitary movement and the collective experience of resistance against mass incarceration. Both movements can learn from each other.

The anti-solitary movement has considerable experience in innovative political education, as evidenced by the tour, and in practicing solidarity with incarcerated people. Simultaneously, immigrant defenders are at the forefront of resisting ICE as a fascist force, harnessing mutual aid and direct action to keep their communities safe, rather than dependence on legislative reform.

Further still, a socialist analysis of mass incarceration and the rise of ICE reveals the class nature of the state and its carceral apparatus.(17)

As much as it is difficult for me to imagine a socialist democracy maintaining the police and prison system, given their core roles as enforcers of racial capitalism, it is similarly difficult to imagine an end to torture and mass incarceration in this current conjuncture of American politics without revolutionary transformation on a mass scale.

Toward that end, I recall Paul Ortiz’s contribution in ATC 240 (January-February 2026), reminding us that critical issues today cannot be confronted separately from each other.(18) Working together, anti-solitary and immigrant defense initiatives could both play vital roles in an organized and disciplined movement to stop ICE and challenge the Prison Industrial Complex as a whole.

Notes

1. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, policymakers in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all announced initiatives to cap or reduce police funding/operations, with Minneapolis councilmembers most famously pledging to dismantle their entire police force (a proposal that never came to fruition).
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2. https://criticalresistance.org/mission-vision/not-so-common-language/
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3. https://journeytojusticetour.com/
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4. https://unlocktheboxcampaign.org/
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5. https://www.look2justice.org/
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6. https://www.nrcat.org/torture-in-us-prisons/learn-more-/mandela-rules
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7. Blackwell, Christopher William., Zalesne, Deborah. Ending Isolation: The Case Against Solitary Confinement. (United Kingdom: Pluto Press, 2025), 15.
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8. I should note that the extent to which the Quaker social ethos can be credited with innovating solitary confinement is still a matter of debate within the movement, who point out that other  faith leaders in the 18th century expressed similar ideals. See: https://www.fcnl.org/updates/2016-09/solitary-confinement-and-quakers
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9. https://solitarywatch.org/2010/02/27/charles-dickens-on-solitary-confinement-immense-torture-and-agony/
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10. For a historical timeline of the development, construction, and operation of Eastern State, see: https://easternstate.org/about/history-of-eastern-state-penitentiary
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11. https://www.michigandaily.com/news/ann-arbor/journey-to-justice-bus-tour-stops-in-ann-arbor-as-part-of-cross-country-campaign-to-end-solitary-confinement/
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12. https://www.aclumich.org/app/uploads/2020/02/aclu_mi_-_michigans_hell_-_vital_projects_report_022020_final.pdf
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13. See the Justice and Accountability Center of Louisiana: https://www.jaclouisiana.org/
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14. At least 70 detainees have died in ICE custody since 2017, although the numbers may well be higher due to poor and opaque record-keeping: https://www.knkx.org/social-justice/2024-06-25/ice-detention-center-in-tacoma-among-those-with-highest-number-of-deaths-aclu
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15. Lawyers present at the vigil reported increasing difficulty in accessing the detention center and communicating with their clients. See: https://www.opb.org/article/2025/12/29/think-out-loud-ice-detention-tacoma-washington/
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16. Of which the reopening of “Camp J” at the notorious Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola, a cell-block known as “the dungeon,” is perhaps the most alarming development of this process. “https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/18/louisiana-angola-prison-trump-ice-immigration
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17. See Malik Miah’s article in ATC 194 for precisely such an analysis: https://againstthecurrent.org/atc194/race-class/
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18. https://againstthecurrent.org/atc240/after-the-2024-elections-where-do-we-go-from-here/
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March-April 2026, ATC 241