Tag: solitary confinement

For nearly three years the 948 solitary confinement cells of Colorado State Penitentiary II have stood empty outside Canon City, a hollow and expensive reminder of a corrections practice the state has largely abandoned. Now, lawmakers say they’re working on a plan to put the prison to use.

In the 1820s, the American penal system sought to end mutilating, amputating and putting convicts to death by housing them alone in isolation cells....

  How long should the government be allowed to imprison someone in extreme isolation? Indefinitely, according to a new federal appeals court ruling. The case, Thomas Silverstein....

"There I was, lying on the concrete floor with a hole through my skull the size of a .50 caliber slug, trying to stop the profuse bleeding."

notes on the 111th day of the 2014 legislative session

The Corrections Department has declined specific comment on its opposition to SB 64’s initial drafting, where they said the nuts and bolts of the policy should be left up to the prison system’s internal regulations. The DOC is part of the executive branch and bristles at the notion of state lawmakers legislating how it should house certain prisoners.

Notes from the 94th day of the 2014 legislative session.

Colorado Independent Editor Susan Greene appeared on DemocracyNow to talk about the scramble in Oklahoma reported by the Independent this week to find drugs to conduct prisoner executions.

"There is no end and no beginning; there is only one's mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything."

Jack Powers is an inmate in the federal Bureau of Prisons convicted of bank robbery and escaping from prison. He spent more than a...