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Jean Casella

Jean Casella is a freelance writer, editor and publishing consultant, and co-editor of Solitary Watch

Articles by this author

	Views Sunday, October 14, 2012 Kids in Solitary Confinement: America's Official Child Abuse Molly J said of her time in solitary confinement: "[I felt] doomed, like I was being banished … Like you have the plague or that you are the worst thing on earth. Like you are set apart [from] everything else. I guess [I wanted to] feel like I was part of the human race – not like some animal." Molly was just 16 years old when she was placed in isolation in an adult jail in Michigan. She described her cell as being "a box": Read more
	Views Wednesday, June 20, 2012 Congress Unlocks America's Hidden Shame of Solitary Confinement Imagine a place filled with closed, windowless cells. Each cell may be so small that you can extend your arms and touch the side walls. It may contain a bunk of poured concrete, a toilet, perhaps a small table and stool. A few personal possessions – books, family photos – may be permitted, or they may not. Read more
	Views Tuesday, July 26, 2011 A Hunger for Justice in Pelican Bay On 21 July, prisoners in solitary confinement at California's notorious Pelican Bay State Prison began accepting the meals that were slipped to them through slots in their solid mental cell doors. For many, it was the first time they had eaten in three weeks. Read more
	News Saturday, March 19, 2011 Cruel and Usual: US Solitary Confinement The spectre of Bradley Manning lying naked and alone in a tiny cell at the Quantico Marine Base, less than 50 miles from Washington, DC, conjures up images of an American Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, where isolation and deprivation have been raised to the level of torture. In fact, the accused Wikileaker, now in his tenth month of solitary confinement, is far from alone in his plight. Every day in the US, tens of thousands of prisoners languish in "the hole". Read more
	Views Thursday, January 20, 2011 Beyond Bradley Manning: The Lonely Battle Against Solitary Confinement For the past few weeks, progressive commentators have been burning with outrage over the prison conditions endured by accused WikiLeaks source, Private Bradley Manning. For more than seven months, Manning has been held in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement at a Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia, denied sunlight, exercise, possessions, and all but the most limited contact with family and friends. Read more
	Views Friday, June 05, 2009 Life on Permanent Lockdown Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox are believed to have been held in solitary confinement for longer than any inmate in America-37 years, to be precise, nearly all of them spent in 6-by-9 cells at Louisiana's notorious Angola prison . For 23 hours a day, they pass the time in their cells as best they can. For one hour, they are allowed out to take a shower or a stroll along the cell block. Read more
	Views Thursday, January 24, 2008 Don't Even Think About It: Enter The Thought Police Perhaps no campaign tactic is more effective than fearmongering, and in the current presidential race the sum of all fears, once again, is radical Islamic terrorists-or "jihadists," to use the now-ubiquitous term. Read more
	Views Friday, August 31, 2007 Windfall: How Conservatives, Contractors, and Developers Cashed In on Katrina In those first emotional days after Katrina laid waste to the Gulf Coast, widespread predictions of a political sea change arrived from liberal and even some conservative commentators. "Americans are ready to fix their restless gaze on enduring problems of poverty, race, and class that have escaped their attention," Newsweek's Jonathan Alter wrote in a September 2005 cover story. Some went so far as to forecast the dawn of a new America, one stunned out of both complacency and conservatism by the images of suffering on the Gulf Coast. Read more