Articles and organizations focused on Solitary Confinement. (First gathered fall 2023, updated spring 2025.) Not exhaustive in any way. Please share additions or comments.

“Canada promised to end solitary confinement: Report shows it has not,” 2021 article at Al Jazeera

“Solitary Confinement in the USA,” Amnesty International, 2013

Calculating Torture, Unlock the Box and Solitary Watch, May 2023

Report to the UN on torture in the US, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, 2014

to the Senate Committee on Human Rights, 2017 John Howard Society (Ontario)

Solitary Confinement, Torture, and Canada’s Structured Intervention Units, Sprott & Dobb, 2021, available through John Howard Society

Learn about solitary confinement in Canada with McGill Law School Journal podcast, audio with transcript.

Learn about solitary confinement in the US from National Religious Coalition Against Torture, variety of materials.

Federal Anti-Solitary Taskforce FAST

States of Solitary, July 2024 Convening

Ending Solitary — or just changing it’s name?
Windsor University Faculty of Law shared this “Access to Justice”  Guest Lecture about attempts to end solitary confinement in Canada. Professor Anthony N. Doob, Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto. Examples are specific to Canada; struggles to end solitary confinement in practice are widely applicable. (Editor’s Note: talk was quite accessible to this non-lawyer.)

Bolts investigated a similar name change yielding on-going confinement in DC Jail, the local facility in the US District of Columbia. Interfaith Action for Human Rights continues to work on local policy and legislation on Solitary Confinement in DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

The Marshall Project recently published an in-depth report on the long impact of solitary confinement, focusing on US federal prisons.

Red Onion State (Supermax) Prison: Interfaith Action for Human Rights shares this statement about “Unbearable Conditions at Red Onion State Prison” and asks for help in amplifying this story and demanding response. More background, including reports going back to 1999, and solidarity actions.

Some Updates from US and Canada

Canada: Solitary Confinement Policy
Recent policy post from Canadian Bar Association on “Structured Intervention Unit” (SIU) implementation. SIUs replaced “administrative segregation” in Canada in 2019. Click through and follow CBA links to learn more and follow this issue.

US: Update on Solitary Confinement Bills
In the US House of Representatives, Rep. Grijalva, from Arizona’s 7th District, recently joined as a cosponsor of HR 4972, the federal End Solitary Confinement Act. This brings total cosponsors to 21. More here.

A similar bill was introduced into the US Senate, on the yarhzeit of Nelson Mandela (South Africa, 1918-2013). Additional bill information. The District of Columbia also recently introduced a bill to end solitary confinement, Use Unlock the Box’s data tracker to learn about bills throughout the US.

Biblical Joseph — Jewish Perspectives

The biblical Joseph’s experience of incarceration has been the subject of a huge array of Jewish discussions over the centuries. Here are a few approaches to explore: “Joseph’s Solitary Confinement,” from T’ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights; “Joseph in Custody,” from the scholarly site Torah.com; and “Joseph in Prison,” among source sheets posted at Sefaria.

Matir Asurim Statement and Related Information

“End Solitary Confinement” Matir Asurim position statement and related links, from Aug 18, 2023; original post at Archive.org; more at Topic Digest

End Solitary Confinement

Matir Asurim members live and work in the US and Canada. Efforts to end solitary confinement are taking different paths in the two countries. MA recently endorsed a piece of federal legislation in the US and shares information about efforts in Canada.

US: End Solitary Confinement Act

STATEMENT TO SHARE
Matir Asurim: Jewish Care Network for Incarcerated People regularly encounters the physical, psychological, and spiritual devastation of solitary confinement. Our name, “Matir Asurim (literally: The One Who Frees Captives),” reflects Jewish values — including human dignity, healing, and teshuvah (repentance/restoration) — in opposition to solitary confinement. We applaud introduction of the End Solitary Confinement Act (HR 4972) in the US Congress, thank its co-sponsors, and encourage others to support this legislation and, more generally, an end to this form of torture wherever it is employed.

We implore other Jewish institutions and organizations to get behind the work of ending solitary and advocating for prison justice more broadly.

[For 118th U.S. Congress, 2023-2024 — WRITE REPS For those in the US: Use this form to encourage your Representative to co-sponsor this bill or thank them for already doing so.

ENDORSE If your congregation or other organization would like to endorse HR 4972, use this form to sign on. Updated list of endorsers.]

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Canada: Isolation Persists

In November 2019, Canada announced abolition of administrative segregation. The shift from “solitary confinement” to “structured intervention units” did not substantially change the experience of extended isolation and its detrimental effects, according to this 2021 on the implementation of the SIUs from May, 2021. More recently, McGill Law School Journal offered this “[Counterpoint] Solitary Confinement in Canada, concerning “the history and evolution of solitary confinement, why its elimination has proved difficult, and the challenges of piecemeal versus system-wide change.”

This episode explores the practice of solitary confinement in Canada and the winding road toward its abolition. Our two guests, Andrea Monteiro (former Director of Corrections for the Yukon Government and founder of Ethical Correctional Consulting, Inc.) and Nora Demnati (a Montreal-based prison lawyer and instructor at McGill’s Faculty of Law) bring their differing experiences and perspectives to bear on the question of prison reform.— podcast, with full transcript, June 27 2023

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Alt Text for graphic: “In keeping with our core belief that all people are made in the image of the divine and deserve to be treated as such, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs joins the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and our other multi-faith and secular partners in support of the End Solitary Confinement Act. — David Bohm, Chair, Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA)” Take action: nrcat.salsalabs.org/esca-2023. #EndSolitary Torture is a Moral Issue

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