Members of the Illinois General Assembly;

Solitary confinement or long-term punitive segregation is a psychological wasteland. It is an environment that not only causes inmates to psychologically deteriorate - it causes undue horror and stress for those that work there too.

I spent two decades in solitary confinement in the Illinois Department of Corrections. I lost my social identity in solitary confinement. I felt rejected, lost and alone. In desperate attempts at a sense of humanity, I used to mutilate my neck, arms, legs and private parts. I used to put razors in my eyes that ...

In these unprecedented times, many people are struggling with both the loneliness of the stay-at-home order and the fear of an uncertain world and an unknown health threat. In these challenging times, many wellness experts and other gurus share their views on how to get through dark times. However, a truly inspiring perspective comes from someone who has known even greater isolation and fear, during more than twenty years in solitary confinement in prison.

Anthony Gay was released in 2018 after more than two decades in a cell the size of a parking spot with nearly complete absence of ...

When the term “civil rights” is invoked, many think of images of Martin Luther King, Jr., standing at the forefront of a street march, protesting, or at a podium challenging the leaders of this country for equality and inclusion. However, the reality is that civil rights is far older than MLK, and from its genesis, it has evolved into something far more prevalent, which dominates today’s news headlines.

How many times do you think you have recited the Pledge of Allegiance? Surely, in the hundreds, if not the thousands, of times. How many times have you said the words “and liberty ...

The New York Times (12/22, A40) editorializes that in “a lamentable 5-to-4 decision earlier this year” in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, “the Supreme Court discarded 50 years of legal precedent to make it significantly harder for Americans to assert their legal rights in federal court.” The case “involved a Muslim man swept up on immigration charges after the Sept. 11 attacks,” but the “damage went beyond the case or the national security sphere.

The court altered the procedural rules for initiating a lawsuit, raising the bar in a fashion destined to make it far harder to bring valid ...