ABOUT US

WHO WE ARE

Unlock the Box is the national campaign to end long-term solitary confinement in the United States and to come into complete compliance with the UN’s Mandela Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners by 2031.  

We accomplish our mission working simultaneously on local and national levels with survivors, advocates, legislators, and community organizations dedicated to ending state-sponsored torture.    Unlock The Box and it’s partners are changing the national conversation, demanding lawmakers adhere to the suggestions laid out by the world’s leader on Human Rights, the United Nations. 

Unlock the Box compiles research and educational materials to spread awareness about this state-sponsored torture and to inspire people like you to fight for meaningful change to our criminal justice system. 

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LEADERSHIP

Our steering committee is comprised of members from partner organizations across the nation. Partnering with these impactful groups helps us stay informed to the unique challenges of each state and population, while allowing us to guide meaningful policy change at a national level. 

MEET THE TEAM
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CAMPAIGN PARTNERs

Unlock The Box is currently active in 16 states, but we are quickly expanding across the nation.  If you are part of an anti-solitary organization in a state we’re not, we want to hear from you!  Please contact us today. 

WHAT WE BELIEVE

Our prisons are a reflection of our values as a society and a nation, and should uphold human rights and respect the dignity and worth of all people.

  • Solitary confinement is a reflection and a measure of a wider punitive culture within the criminal justice system. Working to end solitary confinement helps challenge this culture, and the incarceration crisis it has created. We support reforms that seek to roll back the culture, policies, and practices that are the underpinnings of mass incarceration.
  • An overwhelming body of evidence shows that solitary confinement causes extreme and sometimes permanent damage to the individuals who endure it, and to the families and communities to which they will return. It is also costly and counterproductive, increasing recidivism while failing to reduce prison violence.
  • Humane, effective, and safe alternatives exist for all uses of solitary confinement within all segments of the prison population.
  • Any meaningful transformation of our criminal justice system must address what happens inside prison walls. Reformers and abolitionists alike have a stake in opposing solitary and other inhumane conditions of confinement.
  • Effective campaigns to end solitary confinement must engage all stakeholders, including incarcerated people and their loved ones, advocates and grassroots activists, corrections professionals, legal and health professionals, policymakers, media, and the public.
  • People of color are often disproportionately subjected to solitary confinement, over and beyond their disproportionate representation in the general prison population. Ending solitary confinement requires navigation and resolution of these inequities and the racial bias driving them.

Change on this issue may happen one prison system at a time, and it may not come quickly or easily—but we are approaching a tipping point, and with persistence and resources, it will come. The arc of history bends toward justice, and is on our side.

A ROADMAP FOR CHANGE

51%.  That’s the number that drives us.  A central goal of our campaign is creating public and legislative “tipping” points: ensuring that 51% of the public agrees with banning solitary and that over half our states pass legislation that bans the practice.   Research shows that once this goal is reached, many more states will follow suit.  We won’t stop until all 50 US states have banned the use of solitary confinement. 

Conversation

Facilitating and steering the national conversation surrounding solitary confinement and its alternatives is key to creating an informed public and a reformed prison system. 

legislation

Passing legislation that addresses the use of solitary confinement it as the forefront of our strategy.  We must ensure there are national standards that can be applied at the state level.

Mobilization

Policy is personal.  Alongside passing legislation, we are mobilizing survivors, advocates, prison guards, and other stakeholders to speak out, be heard, and be a part of the anti-solitary revolution. 

IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL STANDARDS

51%.  That’s the number that drives us.  A central goal of our campaign is creating public and legislative “tipping” points: ensuring that 51% of the public agrees with banning solitary and that over half our states pass legislation that bans the practice.   Research shows that once this goal is reached, many more states will follow suit.  We won’t stop until all 50 US states have banned the use of solitary confinement. 

Minors

Solitary confinement has lasting psychological effects on the brain, particularly on the undeveloped brains of minors.  Our first step is prohibiting the use of solitary confinement for anyone under the age of 21

the vulnerable

Ensuring that solitary confinement is not used on our most vulnerable populations such as the mentally ill, elderly, LGBTQ, and pregnant women.


15 DAYS OR LESS

Ensuring the federal government lays out national standards, based on the UN’s Mandela Rules, so that every state can legislate within humane and ethical standards.

 

the Mandela Rules

A ROADMAP TO ENDING SOLITARY

The United Nations is urging the United States to comply with The Mandela Rules for the Humane Treatment of Prisoners. It is important to note that they function as minimum, not gold, standards; the aim is to go beyond them in upholding human rights and dignities. Although they include provisions for the humane practice of solitary confinement in the short term, the intention is to narrow and perhaps even eliminate its use except when absolutely necessary.

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Download the Mandela Rules
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Download a guide to the Mandela Rules
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JOIN THE MOVEMENT

JOIN US FOR A VIRTUAL RALLY

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022
10AM PT/1PM ET
STREAMING LIVE HERE AND ON UNLOCK THE BOX'S SOCIALS

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NEW REPORT

Figures Exceed Previous Counts Because They Include All People in Solitary in Prisons and Jails for 22 or More Hours a Day, and Are Based on the Most Reliable Available Sources

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WASHINGTON

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Campaign efforts led by the ACLU-WA are focused on implementing the recent legislative victory—banning solitary of youth statewide, and beginning to tackle the adult solitary population through policy and legislative changes. They have recently led both litigation and policy work to address solitary confinement in adult and juvenile facilities across the state. In 2017, the ACLU-WA filed and settled Doe vs. Grays Harbor, which challenged the punitive use of solitary confinement in a county juvenile jail with one of the highest rates of incarceration in the state. As a result of the litigation, the county modified its policies to preclude the punitive use of solitary confinement and paid damages. The ACLU-WA also filed Bango v. Pierce County, which challenges the Pierce County Jail’s use of restraints and isolation against detained people with mental illness.

 

ARKANSAS

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Campaign efforts led by DecARcerate have played an active and central role in shared efforts to seek change. They have organized individuals and partner organizations around the state to advocate for HB1530, a bill to require data collection on the use of solitary confinement by the Arkansas Department of Correction (ADC). While this bill did not pass, it did lead to a concession by ADC to collect and disseminate data on solitary confinement in its quarterly public reporting. In 2021, they helped pass HB1470, which bans solitary confinement for pregnant juveniles and places restrictions on its use for pregnant adults. Arkansas has the third highest rate of solitary confinement in the country, and ADC recently increased the number of isolation cells by 400. The long-term goal is to eliminate solitary confinement and replace it with incentive-based and program-rich alternatives and building a state-wide organizing effort around this goal.

 

CONNECTICUT

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Campaign efforts led by the Stop Solitary Connecticut Coalition are focused on passing the PROTECT (Promoting Responsible Oversight & Treatment and Ensuring Correctional Transparency). The Act is comprehensive and aspirational, providing a legislative vehicle to: stop extreme isolation, end abusive restraints, protect social bonds, promote correctional officer wellness, shut down CT’s supermax, ensure correctional oversight and accountability.

 

LOUISIANA

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Campaign efforts led by the Louisiana Stop Solitary Coalition are focused on policy changes within the Louisiana Department of Corrections (DOC), local jails, and juvenile facilities to implement policies that reduce the use of solitary confinement for everyone. . In 2020, they changed solitary confinement law in Louisiana for the first time in 150 years, banning its use for currently and recently pregnant people. In 2021, they achieved a phone call policy for people held in solitary in DOC facilities. The campaign will continue to leverage the resources and expertise of those who have litigated and collected data, with the experience of those who have experienced solitary firsthand and are in the best position to lead on this issue.

 

MASSACHUSETTS

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Massachusetts Against Solitary Confinement (MASC) helped pass MA’s strongest criminal law reform bill in decades, which included significant changes to the state’s solitary confinement policies and practices. The Dept. of Corrections has failed to implement the mandates.  New legislation filed this session will make the legal requirements explicitly clear and effectively end solitary confinement in MA.

MICHIGAN

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The goal of the Open MI Door campaign is to end solitary confinement in all Michigan prisons, jails and juvenile detention facilities, bringing the state into full compliance with the UN’s Mandela Rules. Utilizing a survivor/family led coalition, we seek to implement safe alternatives to segregation.

 

NEBRASKA

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Campaign efforts led by ACLU-NE ended the horrific overreliance on juvenile solitary confinement. The new law bans use of room confinement, except to eliminate substantial, immediate risk of harm and requires release from confinement as soon as the risk is resolved. The campaign is now focused on implementation of the law and expanding reform to the adult system.

 

NEW JERSEY

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Campaign efforts led by the NJ-Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC) have focused on passage of the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act. In 2019, they  successfully passed the bill .They have now moved into the implementation phase of their legislative campaign, which will involve several avenues of focus: influencing the development of regulations, continuing public engagement and education, and building the “scaffolding” of institutional oversight.

 

NEW MEXICO

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Campaign efforts led by ACLU-NM have focused on the passage of the Restricted Housing Act legislation. In 2019, they were successful in passing the bill that prohibits the use of solitary confinement for those under 18 and pregnant individuals. The Act also restricts the use of solitary confinement for people living with serious mental illness and requires jail and prison officials to collect data on who is housed in segregation and why. Finally, the new law includes a provision that requires all privately-operated detention facilities to reveal the monetary amount of settlements related to conditions of confinement, including solitary confinement.

 

NEVADA

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Campaign efforts led by the ACLU-NV Ending solitary confinement in Nevada have been successful in limiting the practice of solitary in juvenile facilities, and within the Department of Corrections. The current focus is ensuring that Senate Bill 402 is properly implemented while we study and evaluate the use of solitary confinement in local adult facilities to evaluate whether legislative and/or regulatory changes are necessary and work to expand the law to local facilities. Evaluate and provide recommendations concerning implementation of the bill.

 

NEW YORK

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Campaign efforts led by the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC) or #HALTsolitary Campaign resulted in the passage of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act in 2021. HALT limits solitary to no more than 15 days for all people, bans it for young people and other groups, and creates alternatives with at least 7 hours out of cell per day with rehabilitative and therapeutic programming. The Campaign is currently working toward HALT’s implementation and pushing New York City to fully end solitary confinement.

PENNSYLVANIA

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Solidarity Not Solitary PA comes out of decades worth of grassroots organizing inside and outside PA prisons. We fight for legislative change to adopt the Mandela Rules—through HB1037 and SB 685—and also work constantly to advocate for changes to the prison system.  Our leaders are formerly incarcerated people and their families, and we also actively support folks organizing inside prisons, especially against long-term solitary and other forms of isolated confinement.

 

VIRGINIA

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Campaign efforts led by the Virginia Coalition Against Solitary Confinement is the primary force in Virginia working to end solitary confinement. A bold legislative proposal was recently drafted by the coalition to abolish solitary confinement in Virginia prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilities. The bill prohibits solitary confinement, defined as confinement of a person in a cell, alone or with another person, for more than 20 hours a day, for all populations, with few narrow, time-limited exceptions for lockdowns, imminent security risks, and for the protection of an incarcerated person The coalition will continue to educate stakeholders and push for a ban on solitary confinement.

 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

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Campaign efforts led by DC Justice Lab will advance legislation that significantly reduces reliance on solitary confinement and use of Black Box restraints in the local detention facilities, and ensuring that policymakers, organizers, and the public understand that the use of solitary confinement does not make incarcerated people safer or healthier.

 

GEORGIA

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An advocacy campaign led by RestoreHER and the Southern Center for Human Rights to end solitary confinement in Georgia is in its early stages. In 2021, they’ve focused their efforts on coalition-building, strengthening relationships with survivors of solitary confinement and other justice advocacy organizations,” or if you’d rather you can make it match the other one, for consistency.

Rhode Island

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Campaign efforts led by the Close High Side Campaign are focused on shutting down Rhode Island’s most restrictive facility, the High Security Center, also known as High Side. Based on available data and interviews with incarcerated individuals, that approximately 120 prisoners, or five percent of RIDOC’s population, are in solitary—including disciplinary and administrative confinement—on any given day. The majority of those, approximately 75, are in the High Security Center, Rhode Island’s supermax prison. This prison is also one of the most expensive prisons to run in the United States. The Campaign goals are to 1) Close the High Security Center, 2) End the state’s reliance on long term solitary confinement, 3) Pursue solutions that are informed by the perspectives of people that have been most directly impacted, 4) Prevent RIDOC from forcing High Security residents to transfer out-of-state, and 5) ensure no new beds and no new facilities.

 

NORTH CAROLINA

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The Stop Torture in NC Prisons Campaign is aimed at ending the use of solitary confinement in NC prisons. Convened by Disability Rights North Carolina, the campaign will harness and target the growing  public energy around criminal justice reform that will utilize  existing partnerships and forge new collaborative relationships to place consistent  pressure on the Governor and State lawmakers to adopt the Task Force  recommendations, effectively ending long-term solitary confinement in North  Carolina.