For over a century, health experts, mental health professionals, advocates and survivors of solitary confinement have unanimously condemned the use of solitary confinement as cruel, trauma-inducing, and counter-productive. In 1890 the US Supreme Court found that it caused severe mental health issues and was even at best counterproductive for rehabilitation, which led it to be largely abandoned in the US for many decades.  After it came back into use in the mass incarceration era, the United Nations declared in 2012 that any isolated confinement lasting longer than 15 days constituted torture and was thus unacceptable for any prison or detention center.

Nevertheless, on any given day, thousands of people are being held in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania's prisons and other institutions. Many are there for small offenses such as disobeying an order or having too many personal items in their cells, and a large majority are being held for months and even years straight.  We believe that Pennsylvania should immediately stop the practice of long-term solitary confinement and seek more humane and credible alternatives.

Our meetings are statewide and via Zoom. Leave your info here to be put on the mailing list for links to those meetings, along with agendas for them and other ways to get involved.