NEW YORK: The Sidney Hillman Foundation announced today that Susan Greene has won the February Sidney Award for "The Gray Box," her shocking look into the use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. The piece appeared as an in-depth reported story and video in Dart Society Reports, an online publication of the Dart Society which advances compassionate and ethical coverage of trauma, conflict and social injustice.
"Greene's report is full of powerful details about the agony of solitary confinement, one of the great under-reported human rights abuses of our time," said Sidney judge Lindsay Beyerstein.
A prisoner in seclusion typically spends 23 hours a day in a cell the size of two queen-sized mattresses and another hour alone in an exercise cage. Indeed, large lab animals are entitled to more space and sensory stimulation than the estimated 80,000 American prisoners housed in solitary confinement.
Seclusion is administered by correctional staff, not judges. Inmates with no record of violence, inside or outside of prison, can be sent to solitary for filing lawsuits protesting their treatment, for their own safety, or on the mere suspicion that they are affiliated with gangs or terrorism.
Solitary confinement can trigger or exacerbate mental illness. Greene discovered that the symptoms of isolation often serve as a pretext for further isolation. One inmate racked up a 97-year sentence for repeatedly throwing his own waste at guards, a behavior that's fairly typical for mentally ill prisoners in solitary.
Susan Greene is a journalist in Denver who specializes in investigating social justice issues. She worked in newspapers for twenty years, most recently as a metro columnist for The Denver Post. She spent years piecing together the lives of some of the most isolated people in the world. Her initial sources were inmates in solitary who followed the column she wrote for a Colorado newspaper and sent feedback. She went on to interview inmates who had been released after serving time in isolation.
The Sidney Award is given once a month to an outstanding piece of socially conscious journalism, by the Sidney Hillman Foundation, which also awards the annual Hillman Prizes every spring. Winners of the Sidney receive a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist, Edward Sorel, a $500 honorarium and a bottle of union-made wine.
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