Blog of Rights
David
Fathi
David Fathi is the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, which brings challenges to conditions of confinement in prisons, jails, and other detention facilities and works to end US overreliance on incarceration. From 2007 to 2010 he was Director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch, which works to defend the rights of particularly vulnerable groups in the United States.
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02/14/2013
Solitary Confinement

Three Questions Senator Durbin and the DOJ Need to Ask about Federal Solitary

By David Fathi, National Prison Project at 3:49pm

On any given day, more than 15,000 federal prisoners are in "the hole."

With a population of over 215,000 prisoners, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is the nation's largest prison system. At a Congressional hearing chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il) last summer, Bureau Director Charles Samuels said that the Bureau holds about 7 percent of its population in solitary confinement at any given time. That's a shockingly high proportion. Many states have a much smaller percentage of prisoners in solitary, even though state prisoners are far more likely than federal prisoners to be serving time for a violent offense.

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12/18/2012
Prisoner Abuse

UN Prisoners’ Rights Meeting: US Puts the Brakes on Progress

By David Fathi, National Prison Project at 1:48pm

The U.N. meeting in Buenos Aires on uniform rules for the treatment of prisoners, which concluded last week, was a significant step toward progressive reform, as the resulting Draft Report makes clear. Unfortunately, due in large part to positions taken by the U.S. delegation, an opportunity to make even greater progress was lost.

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12/12/2012
Solitary Confinement

US at UN Prisoners’ Rights Meeting: Progress, but Still Wrong on Solitary Confinement

By David Fathi, National Prison Project at 5:37pm

Yesterday I wrote about the ACLU’s efforts to ensure that the U.S. government is properly engaged at a U.N.

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12/11/2012
Disability Rights

U.S. Must Support Progressive Changes to Prison Human Rights Standards

By David Fathi, National Prison Project at 1:01pm

I’m writing from Buenos Aires, where I’m representing the ACLU at the Inter-Governmental Expert Meeting (IGEM) on the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.  Established in 1955, the SMRs are the leading international standards on protecting the human rights of prisoners.  They’ve profoundly influenced the law in many countries, and have been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.

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05/10/2012
Private Prisons

ACLU v. CCA: The Private Prison Debate Challenge

By David Fathi, National Prison Project & David Shapiro, ACLU National Prison Project at 3:37pm

Even as for-profit facilities lock up nearly 130,000 prisoners and take in billions of taxpayer dollars each year, these prisons remain shrouded in secrecy. The time has come for a robust public debate about the role of private prisons in our society.   

That’s why the ACLU just sent a letter to Damon Hininger, the head Corrections Corporation of America – the world’s largest private prison company – challenging him to a public debate on the merits of prison privatization. You can urge him to accept our invitation by taking action here.

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05/03/2012
Solitary Confinement

Too young to shave, but old enough for solitary

By David Fathi, National Prison Project at 5:24pm

As any parent knows, teenagers are different than adults. This common-sense observation is backed by hard scientific evidence; we know that an adolescent’s brain continues to grow and develop well into his or her twenties. The fact that teenagers’ brains are still developing makes them especially vulnerable to trauma of all kinds, including the trauma of social isolation and sensory deprivation.

That’s why the leading American child psychiatry association just approved a policy statement opposing the use of solitary confinement in correctional facilities for juveniles. The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry represents over 7,500 child and adolescent psychiatrists and other interested physicians.

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03/06/2012
Solitary Confinement

Solitary Confinement in Arizona: Cruel and Unusual

By David Fathi, National Prison Project at 1:09pm

A class action lawsuit filed today by the ACLU, along with the Prison Law Office, the Arizona Center for Disability Law, and the law firms Jones Day and Perkins Coie, alleges that the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) houses thousands of prisoners in solitary confinement conditions so harsh they violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. While other states also use solitary confinement, Arizona has added features that seem designed to gratuitously increase suffering. The cells in that state's supermax Special Management Units (SMUs) were deliberately constructed with no windows to the outside, so prisoners — many of whom have no means of telling the time — become disoriented and confused, not knowing the whether it is day or night. The cells are often illuminated 24 hours a day, making sleep difficult and further contributing to prisoners' disorientation and mental deterioration.

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02/28/2012
Celebrate Black History

Continuing the Fight for Civil Rights and Prisoners' Rights

By David Fathi, National Prison Project at 3:46pm

In the United States, the freedom struggle of Black people and the struggle for prisoners' rights have long been intertwined.

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02/24/2011

Turning the Corner on Solitary Confinement?

By David Fathi, National Prison Project at 3:22pm

This week, Colorado state Sen. Morgan Carroll and Rep. Claire Levy introduced a bill that would substantially limit the use of solitary confinement in the state's prisons. S.B. 176 would restrict solitary confinement of prisoners with mental illness or developmental disabilities, who currently make up more than one-third of the state's solitary confinement population. It would require regular mental health evaluations for prisoners in solitary, and prompt removal of those who develop mental illness. And it would significantly restrict the practice of releasing prisoners directly from solitary confinement into the community, where they are more likely to re-offend than prisoners who transition from solitary to the general prison population before release.

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07/09/2010

Supermax Prisons: Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading

By David Fathi, National Prison Project at 2:39pm

This week the European Court of Human Rights temporarily halted the extradition of four terrorism suspects from the United Kingdom to the United States. The court concluded that the applicants had raised a serious question whether their possible long-term incarceration in a U.S. “supermax” prison would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “torture or … inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The court noted that “complete sensory isolation, coupled with total social isolation, can destroy the personality and constitutes a form of inhuman treatment which cannot be justified by the requirements of security or any other reason,” and called for additional submissions from the parties before finally deciding the applicants’ claim.

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