Youth to End Solitary SD
A high school-student led initiative
Our mission
To end solitary confinement use in San Diego County Jails and throughout California. We build a coalition of elected officials, non-profits, involved community members, and youth advocates to build the infrastructure necessary to accomplish this goal.
Our Strategy
Lobbying
We lobby government officials at both the State and County level to support solitary confinement reform and implement policy changes.
Awareness & Mobilization
We bring attention to issues associated with solitary confinement in order to build public pressure and a community of critically-engaged advocates who are ready to support our mission.
Youth Involvement
We are a completely high school student-led organization. A major component of our work is building networks of youth advocates to create a sustainable and cross-generational movement.
The #solitaryHurtsCommunity Works Campaign
Youth to End Solitary SD is leading the #SolitaryHurtsCommunityWorks campaign, aiming to end solitary confinement use in both California and San Diego County using the strategy listed above.
California Campaign
We co-lead the California campaign with another high school-student led non-profit, Voices United for Change, which is located in Pasadena.
How can I support the California campaign?
Volunteer or sign up for our newsletter
San Diego Campaign
Youth to End Solitary SD leads the San Diego campaign, bringing together local non-profits, government officials, and youth into a cross-sector, multi-generational movement.
How can I support the San Diego campaign?
Volunteer or sign up for our newsletter
Solitary confinement is torture!
Torture is defined as any act “by which severe pain or suffering whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person” by the United Nations Convention against Torture.
Medical experts, civil rights attorneys, human rights officials, and the United Nations consider solitary confinement to be a form of torture.
Roughly 3,500 Californians are held in isolation. A man in San Diego County has been put in isolation for 4 years.
Why we care:
“It’s like being buried Alive”
What its Like Inside “The Box”
The dimensions of a solitary confinement cell, 6 x 9 feet, are smaller than a parking space
Kept in isolation 23+ hours a day, with lights on 24/7
Plumbing backs up, leaving feces and urine on the floors of cells and filling restrictive housing units with the smell of sewage
Constant sounds of banging and screaming
Lack of proper heating or cooling systems
In Texas, prisoners were subjected to conditions of 115 degrees, being cooked alive
Constant sounds of banging and screaming
THE EPITOME OF CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT
Impacts on Physical Health
Inmates in solitary confinement have a higher risk of hypertension and have a shorter life expectancy. The hippocampus and pre-frontal cortex of an inmate visibly shrink after they are placed in isolation.
Psychological Harm
Inmates in solitary confinement are 5x more likely to commit suicide and oftentimes develop cutting disorders. Inmates suffering from long term isolation are known to have schizophrenic visions of people, experience sensory decompensation, and smear feces on themselves.
Sexual Intimidation
Women who experience solitary confinement are subject to strip searches and showering naked with male guards present. There are also several accounts of sexual harassment in solitary confinement wings by male guards, with women performing sexual acts to receive water and other necessary supplies. They are threatened with being placed in solitary confinement when they refuse to perform sexual acts for guards.
An ineffective means of providing safety
Supporters of solitary confinement claim it is needed to maintain safety in jails. But is this really the case?
Several studies have found no relationship between solitary confinement usage and the rate of jail infractions; as a matter of fact, research has found that solitary results in increased rates of violent crime within institutions
One study showed that inmates in isolation who were involved in gangs had “a 9.7% increase in the expected count of violent misconduct and a 12.3% increase in thee expected count of nonviolent misconduct?
Solitary makes communities less safe
Research from Cornell University has shown that stays in solitary — even relatively short periods lasting a few days — increases the likelihood of recidivism by 15%
In Connecticut, 92% of inmates who spent time in solitary committed another crime, compared to a standard recidivism rate of 61%
Our guiding principles
“the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
At Youth to End Solitary SD, we believe that the human rights of prisoners must be protected by our criminal justice system, regardless of the crime they have committed or have been charged with. We believe that solitary confinement is the embodiment of a larger broken carceral system which traumatizes prisoners for the sake of keeping them in cycles of poverty and recidivism.
We believe that the conditions of our prisons - and the conditions of solitary confinement in particular - serve to demonstrate how society has divorced itself from humanity and the respect for universal dignity through its medieval treatment of the most vulnerable in society.
Over half of those in solitary confinement suffer from a mental illness, and upwards of 75% of these prisoners also have suffered from adverse childhood experiences (ACE’s).
YesSD further believes that youth have the power and capacity to initiate real and innovative change in their communities, and that youth have a seat at the decision-making table. We actively recruit fellow youth in the advocacy process and are entirely run by high schoolers.
Support Youth to End Solitary SD (YesSD)
Join our community of critically engaged advocates. Sign up for our newsletter, sign up to volunteer with the San Diego #SolitaryHurtsCommunityWorks campaign, or follow us on Instagram and TikTok.