Contact: Sam Lew, 415-272-8022, sam@alcenter.org

WHEN: Wednesday, June 4 at 12:00 p.m. ET 
WHERE: Pennsylvania State Capitol, Main Rotunda, Harrisburg  
WHAT: Press conference and rally 
WHO: Legislators, organizations (Abolitionist Law Center, Human Rights Coalition, YSPR –Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project, YEAHPhilly, and Healing Communities), people who have experienced solitary confinement, family members. 

HARRISBURG — On Wednesday, June 4, legislators, formerly incarcerated people, and advocates will come together to announce an upcoming bill to end solitary confinement in prisons, jails, and detention centers in Pennsylvania. The legislative memo and ensuing bill will be sponsored by Representatives Emily Kinkead and Tina Davis. 

The bill will: 

• Ensure that everyone receives a minimum of at least four hours of out-of-cell time. 
• Establish much stronger criteria for the offenses that can get people placed in solitary. Eliminates placement in solitary for things like disobeying a verbal order or having small contraband like extra pens, ketchup packets, etc
• Further limit solitary confinement for certain vulnerable populations, including people with mental illness, and pregnant and prenatal individuals. 

Solitary confinement is the torturous practice of isolating people in closed cells for as much as 24 hours a day, virtually free of human contact, for periods ranging from days to decades, often for almost any reason. Solitary confinement is profoundly racist: One study showed that one in ten Black men born between 1986-1989 have experienced solitary confinement. In Pennsylvania, the longest amount of time spent in solitary was 37 years (ALC client and mentor Arthur ‘Cetewayo’ Johnson). The United Nations considers more than 14 days in solitary confinement as a form of torture and studies show that any amount of time in solitary has adverse impacts on cognitive, emotional, and psychological health. 

For the nearly 70,000 people in Pennsylvania’s carceral system, the prospect of being placed in isolation and removed from all socialization for months or even years at a time is a constant threat. At any given time, there are more than 2,000 Pennsylvanians in state prisons and hundreds more in jails and detention centers who are in solitary confinement. 

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The Abolitionist Law Center is a public interest law firm and community organizing project led by people who’ve been directly impacted by incarceration and other types of state violence, that advocates with and for people whose human rights have been violated by the carceral system and state violence, educates the public about the system’s harms, and works to develop a mass movement to dismantle and abolish carceral institutions and redistribute resources to people the system harms. Follow Abolitionist Law Center on Facebook, @AbolitionistLC on Twitter, and @Abolitionistlc on Instagram.

The Human Rights Coalition is a grassroots non-profit group of currently and formerly incarcerated people, their families, and supporters. Follow Human Rights Coalition on Instagram.