HUNTSVILLE, Texas - The Texas prison system's policy of housing all people on death row in solitary confinement is a form of torture and a violation of human rights, according to a new study.

The report from the University of Texas School of Law, finds that the state houses a person awaiting execution in an eight-by-12-foot cell for 23 hours a day - usually for years - while appeals move slowly through the court system.

Ariel Dulitzky, director of UT Law's Human Rights Center, said that when people are physically and emotionally isolated, it takes a heavy toll.

"Any person who is kept in solitary confinement for more than 15 days starts to suffer mental and psychological effects that cannot be reversed," she said, "and that fits the definition of torture."

The study said isolation should not be used unless the person poses a danger, and never for those who have mental illnesses. Dulitzky said Texas falls far short of the standards in international treaties for housing people with death sentences. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice responded to the study, saying it "house(s) death-row offenders appropriately."

For the study, the authors sent questionnaires to all former death-row inmates whose sentences had been commuted, although they were not allowed to contact anyone currently on death row. Dulitzky said many of the respondents reported they had been deprived of basic needs - such as outdoor exercise, human contact and adequate health care.

"And it's not to the state to start torturing people as a way of punishing for their crimes. The punishment for their crime is, in this case, capital punishment, but it's not the torture that Texas is exercising on these inmates."

Texas has executed 475 prisoners since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 - by far the most of any state, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. By legislative mandate, Texas keeps all people on death row in solitary confinement. With appeals, their prison stays average more than 14 years, but can be as long as 25 years.

The report is online at law.utexas.edu.


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CLARIFICATIONS: Mayor Jaime Kinder was not the coauthor of the report mentioned, and her office was not the source of the interviews with 700 residents. Story has been reworded accordingly. (10:12 a.m. MDT, Nov. 18. 2023)


A small, rural Pennsylvania community has taken a proactive approach to an area many small towns struggle with: grant funding.

The City of Meadville collects property taxes, but needs additional resources for some projects.

Meadville Mayor Jaime Kinder sought assistance from Allegheny College, which developed a grant-writing course. The students hone their skills by working with organizations and government agencies.

Kinder, along with a student and the Family and Community Christian Association, penned a grant proposal aimed at screening for lead poisoning.

"The first grant we wrote in this partnership, we got it. We got $25,000," Kinder explained. "That also allows for $4,000 to $5,000, to go to administration, from the city. It's a beautiful thing, when the first one you go after is a win."

Kinder added before the grant-writing partnership, the city lacked the capacity to pursue a grant which could have provided up to $500,000 in assistance to homeowners.

Kinder assisted with a 2023 Rural Policy Action Report. It provided recommendations for the federal government to help eliminate barriers hindering small communities like hers from getting essential funding. She pointed out even when grants are accessible, having the funds to administer them is crucial.

"It's great to have the money, but if we can't find or pay a person to do it [go after the funding], we can't go after it," Kinder emphasized. "The federal government should be able to put in those stipulations -- 20 hours a week for six months, for somebody to write the grant; 20 hours a week to administer. We can use that same person to do multiple grants."

Kinder said before she was in office, 700 interviews were done with people living in Meadville, which indicated that residents there want transparent government and leadership. She said it's crucial to engage with those who are often unheard and amplify their voices in order to have stronger and more resilient communities benefiting everyone.


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David Lopez, distinguished visiting professor of law at Arizona State University and co-dean emeritus at Rutgers University, said Arizona State has evolved since he was an undergraduate student there back in the 1980s.

Today, Lopez said he is proud to see the university be a Hispanic Serving Institution as more than 25% of the student body is Hispanic.

Lopez is back temporarily in his home state of Arizona and alma mater as a distinguished visiting professor to teach about legal structures and cases through the lens of the Latino community, by using a music and humanities approach to what he calls "fact-checking the law."

Lopez emphasized he wants to foster allyship and empathy among students of all backgrounds. Of the nearly 300 law students enrolled in 2022, 35% were students of color.

"Coming from Arizona, you understand the history and the reality of a racialized border and how that sort of bleeds out into communities regardless of immigration status," Lopez pointed out. "All you have to do is look at the really sweeping findings of racial profiling."

Lopez noted controversial legislation such as Senate Bill 1070, which required law enforcement officers to inquire about a suspect's status if they had reason to believe the individual was in the U.S. illegally, incited fear across Arizona.

While the effects are still felt today, he has found it has given rise to activism, which over the years has cultivated a stronger sense of belonging for the Latino community.

A recent survey commissioned by the Immigration Hub found a majority of Latino voters in key 2024 states such as Arizona want President Joe Biden to provide more relief to migrants in the U.S. without legal status while also securing the southern border.

Lopez argued the legal system is structured to leave the multifaceted Latino community in what he called a "state of displacement and limbo."

"Maricopa County has been ground zero of so much in terms of national division over immigration and ASU is sitting right in the middle of ground zero," Lopez stressed. "I think there was sort of this sense that it was important to engage and tell the history of these communities. "

Lopez added in the past, substantial research has come out of his course, which he noted focuses on issues often forgotten about in law schools.

By Sunnivie Brydum and Sonali Kolhatkar for Yes! Magazine.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the YES! Media-Public News Service Collaboration

For more than 40 years, a bill to establish a congressional commission to consider reparations to Black Americans has languished in Congress. House Resolution 40, originally drafted by the late Rep. John Conyers, has been introduced in every congressional session since 1989.

Reparations are about more than just a check or financial restitution. At their root, reparations are about repair-recognizing the historic and ongoing harm caused by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and all that followed, including Jim Crow segregation, voter suppression, continued police violence, and ongoing systemic racism in housing, employment, education, and more.

Despite continued resistance at the federal level to provide reparations to descendants of enslaved Africans, the United States does have a history of issuing reparations-reparations were issued to Japanese Americans who were unjustly detained during World War II. In fact, when enslaved people were emancipated, the U.S. government issued reparations-to former slaveholders, in recognition of the loss of their "property." Yet the U.S. continues to lack the political will to seriously consider making reparations to Black Americans.

In the face of political intransigence, Black organizers, community members, and movement leaders have created a rich ecosystem to manifest reparations at both the state and local levels.

HR 40 now has nearly 200 sponsors, and there are calls for President Biden to sign an executive order appointing a commission to study reparations. Rep. Cori Bush has introduced a new bill with a concrete figure of $14 trillion to fund compensation for the descendants of enslaved people. Spurred by grassroots momentum-especially in the wake of George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020-states such as California and cities such as Evanston, Illinois, are even further along in the project of reparations.

YES! was privileged to be the media partner of the inaugural Alight, Align, Arise conference-a historic and unprecedented national convening on reparations hosted by the Decolonizing Wealth Project. Over the course of three days in June 2023, hundreds of activists, organizers, politicians, and funders gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, to connect, collaborate, and take action to make reparations a reality in our lifetimes. On the final day of the conference, DWP announced a $20 million campaign to support the reparations ecosystem with a new round of direct grantmaking of $3 million to be deployed in 2023, in addition to other resource and education programs to support the reparations movement over the next five years.


Sunnivie Brydum and Sonali Kolhatkar wrote this article for YES! Magazine.