One of the past priorities of the Criminal Justice Reform task force was to help pass the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act (ICRA) which was signed into law in 2019. UU FaithAction NJ (then Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of New Jersey) was a member of the New Jersey Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (NJ-CAIC) coalition. NJ-CAIC later expanded its scope, becoming New Jersey Prison Justice Watch (NJPJW), working to bring attention to multiple issues within NJ prisons. One of the issues that was always in the forefront was that the new ICRA regulations were not always being followed. NJPJW has now gone back to its roots to focus on the implementation of ICRA.
It is also through NJPJW and LAN that the CJR task force has come into close contact with the Office of the Corrections Ombudsman, whose mission if to provide independent prison oversight to protect the safety, health, and well-being of incarcerated people. The recently appointed Ombudsman, Terry Schuster, has been working with allied organizations to take meaningful steps in support of that mission.
Resources to further understand Isolated Confinement as torture include the following:
Books:
- Solitary: Unbroken by four decades in solitary confinement. My story of transformation and hope. by Albert Woodfox —Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement – in a six-foot by nine-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana – all for a crime he did not commit
- Six by Ten: Stories from Solitary (Voice of Witness) by Taylor Pendergrass and Mateo Hoke — Six by ten feet. That’s the average size of the cells in which tens of thousands of people incarcerated in the United States linger for weeks, months, and even decades in solitary confinement. With little stimulation and no meaningful human contact, these individuals struggle to preserve their identity, sanity, and even their lives
Organizations:
The National Campaign Unlock the Box to end Solitary Confinement
National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT)