by William Blake | Apr 28, 2026 | Death by Incarceration, Incarceration, Life Without Parole, New York, Op-Ed, Parole, Prisons, SHU, Solitary Confinement, Special Housing Unit
In 2013, when I had been locked up in solitary confinement for 25 years, I wrote an essay entitled “A Sentence Worse Than Death,” which I’m told has been read by upwards of a million people to date. It describes what life was like in “the box” (the special housing unit, or SHU for short) in New York’s state prisons, and posited that if given the choice, I would have opted for a sentence of death…
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by Sonali Kolhatkar | Apr 12, 2026 | Abolition, Death by Incarceration, juvenile life without parole, Life Without Parole, life without possibility of parole, News, Organizing, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Prisons, Supreme Court
In late March, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court issued a momentous ruling overturning mandatory life sentences for people convicted of felony murder, also known as second-degree murder. Activists and advocates hailed the ruling as a victory that was years in the making and has the potential to impact the lives of more than a thousand people in the state, a majority of whom are Black.
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