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.
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.

Read More»
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.

Read More»
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.

Read More»
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.

Read More»
Statistics image