AFSC Arizona is proud to announce a critical follow-up report to Buried Alive (2007) and Lifetime Lockdown (2012) on solitary confinement in Arizona prisons, highlighting the voices of maximum-security prisoners and cataloguing their testimonies describing those experiences. This report, Still Buried Alive: Arizona Prisoner Testimonies on Isolation in Maximum-Security (2014), is being released on the same day that the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) is opening 500 newly constructed maximum-security prison beds in ASPC Lewis in Buckeye, Arizona.

No one knows what life is like in solitary confinement better than those men and women who have endured years in isolation conditions. And as ADC Director Ryan and Governor Brewer have decided to double down on their commitment to long-term prisoner isolation with these 500 new max beds, AFSC Arizona decided to go ahead and ask the men and women who have already been in similar conditions what they thought. Still Buried Alive (2014) is the product of their poignant and powerful answers.

Forty-one prisoners responded to AFSC Arizona’s call for testimony, with a combined total of over 367 years in solitary confinement. There responses were poignant as they were chilling, and offered a clear road map towards decreased in-cell time for maximum-security prisoners. ADC Director Ryan and Governor Brewer needs to heed their call.

Read the full report including AFSC Arizona’s recommendations here.

—

***Stay tuned this week for new posts each day, highlighting stories and quotes from this report as well as other posts about AFSC Arizona’s work on prisoner isolation.***