Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment distinguished by living in single cells with little or no meaningful contact with other inmates, strict measures to control contraband, and the use of additional security measures and equipment. It is specifically designed for disruptive inmates who are security risks to other inmates, the prison staff, or the prison itself — but can also be used as a measure of protection for inmates whose safety is threatened by other inmates.
Sing Sing Correctional Facility is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York. It is about 30 miles (48 km) north of New York City on the east bank of the Hudson River. Sing Sing holds about 1,700 prisoners and housed the execution chamber for the State of New York until the abolishment of capital punishment in New York.
The United States Disciplinary Barracks is a military correctional facility located on Fort Leavenworth, a United States Army post in Kansas.
Thomas Mott Osborne was an American prison administrator, prison reformer, industrialist and New York State political reformer. In an assessment of Osborne's life, a New York Times book reviewer wrote: "His career as a penologist was short, but in the interval of the few years he served he succeeded in revolutionizing American prison reform, if not always in fact, then in awakening responsibility.... He was made of the spectacular stuff of martyrs, to many people perhaps ridiculous, but to those whose lives his theories most closely touched, inspiring and often godlike."
A super-maximum security (supermax) or administrative maximum (ADX) prison is a "control-unit" prison, or a unit within prisons, which represents the most secure levels of custody in the prison systems of certain countries.
Auburn Correctional Facility is a state prison on State Street in Auburn, New York, United States. It was built on land that was once a Cayuga village. It is classified as a maximum security facility.
Elmira Correctional Facility, also known as "The Hill," is a maximum security state prison located in Chemung County, New York, in the City of Elmira. It is operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. The supermax prison, Southport Correctional Facility, is located two miles away from Elmira.
Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP), sometimes called Oregon State Prison, is a maximum security prison in Oregon, United States. Opened in 1851, the 2,242-capacity prison is the oldest prison in the state. The all-male facility is located in Salem and is operated by the Oregon Department of Corrections.
Tennessee State Prison is a former correctional facility located near downtown Nashville, Tennessee. It opened in 1898 and has been closed since 1992 because of overcrowding concerns. The mothballed facility was severely damaged by an EF3 tornado in the tornado outbreak of March 2–3, 2020.
Menard Correctional Center, known prior to 1970 as Southern Illinois Penitentiary, is an Illinois state prison located in the town of Chester in Randolph County, Illinois. It houses maximum-security and high medium-security adult males. The average daily population as of 2007 is 3,410.
In the United States, lockstep marching or simply lockstep is marching in a very close single file in such a way that the leg of each person in the file moves in the same way and at the same time as the corresponding leg of the person immediately in front of him, so that their legs stay very close all the time.
Red Onion State Prison (ROSP) is a supermax state prison located in Wise County, Virginia, near Pound. Operated by the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC), it houses about 800 inmates. The prison opened in August 1998.
The Marquette Branch Prison (MBP) is located in Marquette, Michigan on the south shore of Lake Superior. The prison, which opened in 1889, is a facility of the Michigan Department of Corrections that holds about 1,100 inmates in maximum and minimum-security housing. The inmate population consists of adult males, aged eighteen and older. The prison was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as State House of Correction and Branch Prison on November 23, 1977.
A prisoner is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or forcible restraint. The term applies particularly to serving a prison sentence in a prison. This term no longer applies to pre-trial defendants.
Captain Elam Lynds (1784–1855) was a prison warden. He helped create the Auburn system, which consisted of congregate labor during the day and isolation at night, starting in 1821 and was Warden of Sing Sing from 1825 to 1830.
The British Columbia Penitentiary was a federal maximum security prison located in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. The BC Penitentiary operated for 102 years, from 1878 until it was decommissioned in 1980. It was the first federal penal institution west of Manitoba.
Imprisonment as a form of criminal punishment only became widespread in the United States just before the American Revolution, though penal incarceration efforts had been ongoing in England since as early as the 1500s, and prisons in the form of dungeons and various detention facilities had existed since long before then. Prison building efforts in the United States came in three major waves. The first began during the Jacksonian Era and led to the widespread use of imprisonment and rehabilitative labor as the primary penalty for most crimes in nearly all states by the time of the American Civil War. The second began after the Civil War and gained momentum during the Progressive Era, bringing a number of new mechanisms—such as parole, probation, and indeterminate sentencing—into the mainstream of American penal practice. Finally, since the early 1970s, the United States has engaged in a historically unprecedented expansion of its imprisonment systems at both the federal and state level. Since 1973, the number of incarcerated persons in the United States has increased five-fold, and in a given year 7,000,000 people were under the supervision or control of correctional services in the United States. These periods of prison construction and reform produced major changes in the structure of prison systems and their missions, the responsibilities of federal and state agencies for administering and supervising them, as well as the legal and political status of prisoners themselves.
In the United States penal system, upwards of 20 percent of state and federal prison inmates and 18 percent of local jail inmates are kept in solitary confinement or another form of restrictive housing at some point during their imprisonment. Solitary confinement generally comes in one of two forms: disciplinary segregation, in which inmates are temporarily placed in solitary confinement as punishment for rulebreaking; and administrative segregation, in which prisoners deemed to be a risk to the safety of other inmates, prison staff, or to themselves are placed in solitary confinement for extended periods of time, often months or years.
While studies have shown the effects of solitary confinement to be detrimental to some inmates, solitary confinement of women has particular consequences for women that may differ from the way it affects men. Solitary confinement rates for women in the United States are roughly comparable to those for men and about 20% of prisoners will be in solitary confinement at some point during their prison career.
The August Rebellion refers to a 1974 riot at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a prison in Bedford Hills in the Town of Bedford, Westchester County, New York, United States. In August 1974, about 200 women imprisoned at Bedford Hills rioted, taking over parts of the prison, because of the inhumane treatment of one of the leaders among the prisoners, Carol Crooks.
