Ridgeway: Unearthing Solitary Confinement

In the second issue of Dart Society Reports, Susan Greene takes an investigative look at solitary confinement in American prisons. As she points out, it’s a difficult topic to report on, and by design. Correctional officials  are not forthcoming, and prisoners in solitary are difficult to reach.

James Ridgeway knows these problems well. A senior correspondent at Mother Jones, Ridgeway has been covering solitary and harsh and abusive punishment for years. In December, he wrote about Felix Garcia, a deaf man wrongfully imprisoned nearly 30 years ago for murder — a murder his brother has confessed to in court. Ridgeway writes, “His experiences are the stuff of TV prison dramas: He’s ignored or taunted by guards, raped and brutalized by other prisoners. Last year, he tried to hang himself.”

People like Garcia get under Ridgeway’s skin. Two years ago, Ridgeway and colleague Jean Casella started Solitary Watch, an organization designed to make information about this secret system public. Ridgeway talks with the Dart Society about what motivated him to start Solitary Watch, what it’s achieved, and whether he thinks of his work of journalism or activism.

Dart Society: What does Solitary Watch do and why do you think that’s important?

Ridgeway: Solitary Watch takes a stab at opening the door and making available to the general public the details of solitary confinement in the U.S. According to the Vera Institute, there may be as many as 80,000 people in solitary. There are no hard figures. Nobody knows how solitary works. How you get thrown into the box, how you get out … is often at the caprice of the prison administrators and thus is sometimes called “a sentence within a sentence.” So we try to get at the details of this system, relying on reports, individual cases, and on prisoners who are writing us with bits and pieces of information and providing us with tips for stories. We aim to give them a voice and publish their articles, letters, statements, and to follow up on tips. We publish fact sheets on various aspects of solitary [and] put out a print edition that is sent free to prisoners. With colleagues at Washington and Lee University, we have compiled a resources file.

We believe people in prison are human beings and have a right to be treated humanely. Solitary can verge on torture, and we want to expose such situations and bring them to general public attention. We can’t talk about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib if we pursue the same sorts of activities at home — not just in isolated situations but across the country, in our own backyards.

Dart Society: How did Solitary Watch get started? What accomplishments stand out to you?

Ridgeway: I started Solitary Watch two years ago, after covering the Angola 3 case in Louisiana. In that case, two of the men still in prison had been held in solitary for more than three decades. This is their 40th year in solitary. Various actions in state and federal court had challenged their conviction for a murder of a prison guard, but the warden claimed that these men, then in their mid-60s, were revolutionaries and a danger to our general security. The Louisiana attorney general made a big political deal by singling out these revolutionaries. When asked why they were in solitary, Burl Cain, the warden, said in a deposition they were guilty of “pantherism.” And what was pantherism? Cain didn’t know. He said the panthers waved their fists in the air.

I sought to interview the men and visit the prison but was denied entrance and interviews because, the prison spokeswoman said, they didn’t like what I wrote. I couldn’t believe people in this country could be held in solitary for such long periods, and began to make inquiries. That led to the blog.

Dart Society: What happened to the Angola 3?

Ridgeway: We have pursued the Angola 3 case. The ACLU in Louisiana agreed to represent me in federal court in an effort to gain entrance to the prison, and facing serious litigation, Angola caved and agreed to an innocuous tour. I was told the warden would talk to me. When I got there, he had left for Atlanta.

Dart Society: What other cases is Solitary Watch on?

Ridgeway: We recruit interns and through them have provided close coverage of the Pelican Bay Hunger strike. Right now we are involved in an investigation of solitary as it is used in the New York state prison system. I am working on an investigation of old people in prison with particular emphasis on those in solitary. We broke the story of how Rikers Island was building more solitary cells supposedly to rehabilitate juveniles.

From time to time, we’ll get on a story that involves harsh punishment, where solitary is not necessarily the dominant factor. Harsh, unfair and damaging punishment is what led me to take up the story of Felix Garcia, the deaf inmate in Florida, railroaded by a brother and sister in a murder.

Dart Society: It seems to me that part of what Solitary Watch is doing is bringing voices we literally don’t hear to a place where we might hear them. That’s also the work of journalism, and a mission of the Dart Society. Do you see Solitary Watch as doing something different than the media can or should do, or do you think of the organization has correcting for a failure or blind spot of the media?

Ridgeway:We hope that by plugging away on solitary the mainstream media will become more interested in this subject. There is brilliant reporting on the regional and local level — in Illinois, Colorado, Poughkeepsie, New York, to mention a few examples.

Dart Society: Some readers of “The Gray Box” wonder what they can do about solitary confinement. Does Solitary Watch have actions in which readers can take part?

Ridgeway: We are journalists and are very keen to maintain our independence. If we have models, they would be the old muckrakers like Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair. That is the kind of advocacy journalism I am anxious to emulate.

My hope is that the prisoners now hidden away in solitary can begin to communicate with the “free world,” and that can lead to change, and in the end run put an end to solitary confinement.