Below is a copy of a promotional release for a solitary confinement reform event coming up in April. The event is sponsored by the ACLU, North Carolina Advocates for Justice, and Stop Torture Now. Edelstein & Payne partner Steve Edelstein is active with Stop Torture Now and will be at the event! 

Solitary Confinement As Torture Friday, April 10
1:30-3:30 p.m.
University of North Carolina School of Law                                                               Room 4085                                                                                                                    160 Ridge Rd, Chapel Hill, NC 27599

What is it like to be held in solitary confinement? How is the practice used in North Carolina? And what is the status of the movement to reform or end the use of solitary confinement, which a recent report argues is a form of torture?

Join a survivor of solitary confinement and a group of policy advocates working on the front lines of prison reform for a comprehensive discussion about the use of solitary confinement in North Carolina and across the country, its physical and psychological impact on inmates, and its relationship to American and international human rights laws, as well as the growing movement to reform and eventually end the use of solitary confinement in the United States.

Solitary Confinement as Torture, a report released last year by the Human Rights Policy Seminar at the University of North Carolina School of Law that was based on research and interviews with inmates kept in solitary confinement, concluded that the practice is a cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment that amounts to torture and must no longer be used in the United States.

The April 10 event will feature a conversation with Robert King, one of the “Angola Three,” who spent 29 years in solitary confinement in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola Prison) after the 1972 killing of a prison guard. King's conviction was eventually overturned and he was released in 2001.

Other speakers will include

• Deborah Weissman, Reef Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law, UNC School of Law, who served as faculty adviser for the 2014 report “Solitary Confinement as Torture”
• Chris Brook, Legal Director, ACLU of North Carolina
• Christina Cowger, Facilitator, NC Stop Torture Now
• Elizabeth Simpson, Staff Attorney, North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services
• Mark Bowers, Attorney, Legal Services of Southern Piedmont
• Moira Artigues, Forensic Psychologist

Sponsored by North Carolina Advocates for Justice, UNC School of Law, NC Stop Torture Now, and the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation.