September 2013"On Thursday a federal judge will consider whether a lawsuit challenging long-term solitary confinement at Pelican Bay State Prison should be certified as a class action. Filed on behalf of 10...
May 2012The prolonged use of solitary confinement at a high-security prison in California "strips prisoners of their basic humanity" and amounts to illegal torture, a human rights group charged in a federal...
July 2013"On Monday, 30,000 prisoners in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison in California went on hunger strike to protest solitary confinement and security unit conditions -- risking...
May 2012Now fellow SHU inmates and I have joined together with the Center for Constitutional Rights in a federal lawsuit that challenges this treatment as unconstitutional. I understand I broke the law, and...
July 2014On July 8, 2013, 30,000 prisoners refused their meals, launching the largest mass prison hunger strike in U.S. history. One year later, Todd Ashker is marking off his twenty-fourth year in Pelican...
July 2014By Alexis Agathocleous and Rachel Meeropol, senior attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights When Todd Ashker was transferred to the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at California's Pelican Bay...
November 2011"George Ruiz is 72 years old. For the past 30 years, he has spent every day alone — locked in a cramped, windowless cell inside the Security Housing Unit (SHU) first at California’s...
Issued October 2009 by the New York Campaign for Telephone Justice Introduction Starting in 1996 the New York State Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) contracted with MCI/Verizon to provide...
Updated: January 11, 2010
There has been dramatic growth in the number of people held in local jails in New York State in the last decade, with the total capacity of jails in upstate New York and Long Island increasing by 20...
Updated: January 11, 2010
Prepared for the 9th Annual World Day Against the Death Penalty, this position paper explores the link between the death row experience and torture. To read an op-ed by Rachel and Robert Meeropol...
Updated: May 16, 2012
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