Solitary Lives

Solitary Lives, a new project from the Center for Investigative Reporting, uses compelling photographs to highlight one aspect of the isolation of prison inmates in California: the fact that thousands of inmates were not allowed to have their picture taken to share with family or friends.

Imagine if the last photo you had of your loved one was taken of him as a kid, looking like this:



(photo info and credit here at Solitary Lives/)

before he spent 5 or 16 or 29 years in solitary confinement. He might look like this now:

(photo info and credit here at Solitary Lives)

“That’s what they call a ghost,” says one mother says of her son. “It’s just a thin line between life and death. He’s alive, but you can’t touch him, you can’t hear him, you can’t see him.”

Prohibiting photographs is just one of the many unnecessary and dehumanizing practices in the largely unregulated world of solitary confinement. There is little to prevent California prisons from sending inmates to isolation indefinitely.

Last Monday, 30,000 California inmates started a hunger strike aimed at raising awareness about torture and policies of indefinite solitary confinement in prisons.  

Some inmates have been kept in solitary confinement for decades.