John,

Over 122,000 people are locked in solitary confinement for 22 hours or more each day across federal, state, and local prisons and jails. Even more people are in solitary inside immigration detention facilities, and many are stuck in torturous isolation for months or years.

UN experts have condemned solitary as psychological torture -- and that’s exactly what it is. It’s traumatic and it rips away people’s humanity. It’s also disproportionately inflicted on Black and brown folks, young people, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized communities.

So I introduced the End Solitary Confinement Act with colleagues, advocates, and survivors of solitary confinement to end this heinous and immoral practice.

Please sign on today to support the End Solitary Confinement Act. Together we can save lives and stop torture.

We need justice for people like Kalief Browder, who was 16 years old when he was arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. He was held in solitary confinement for 700 days, and when he got out, he died by suicide.

An inhumane, cruel, torturous system of criminalization and isolation killed Kalief, as it has killed so many others.

To save lives, we urgently need to pass the End Solitary Confinement Act.

If passed, the bill would:

• End solitary confinement in federal prisons, jails, and other detention settings -- with an exception for a maximum of 4 hours for emergency de-escalation (not punishment).

• Ensure all people incarcerated in federal facilities have meaningful access (at least 14 hours) to out-of-cell time, group programming, and basic needs and services each day.

• Expand due process protections for incarcerated people, including ensuring access to representation and neutral decision-makers.

• Create oversight and enforcement mechanisms, including a community monitoring body that could investigate complaints, and mandating regular reporting on the use of solitary and incidents of self-harm.

• Provide additional protections against placing vulnerable populations in solitary.

• Incentivize states and local governments to end solitary confinement in state and local facilities.

Add your name to be a grassroots co-sponsor of the End Solitary Confinement Act, so we can put an end to solitary confinement once and for all.

Genuine community safety will never be achieved so long as we rely on mass incarceration and torture.

I’m pushing to end our country’s instinct to criminalize, incarcerate, and punish -- and instead build systems of care that see the humanity in every person.

With love,

Cori