People Against Solitary Confinement

Please join us in Appleton this May 2023 to experience the Solitary Confinement cell

May 11 – 12 2023
10am to 6pm

St Joseph Catholic Church
404 W Lawrence St
Appleton, WI

We have two traveling programs for change: The Wisdom/Mose Taskforce Solitary Confinement Cell Truck and Like an Animal in a Cage. We welcome any opportunity to bring them to groups across Wisconsin. We are based in Madison. Our Goal is to help people understand and feel how solitary confinement destroys people rather than simply punishes them.

We advocate 15 days maximum is enough in solitary confinement in the Wisconsin Prison System. Currently, solitary confinement stays here can be open-ended with prisoners locked away, many for months, some for years.

We oppose the use of solitary confinement period. Reducing its use is the first step.

In 2011, the UN’s Human Rights Commission concluded, “It is clear that short-term solitary confinement can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;…Prolonged solitary confinement, in excess of 15 days, should be subject to an absolute prohibition.”

Talib Akbar, owner, driver, explainer, repairman, caretaker for the Mobile Solitary Confinement Cell. October 2, 2020 at the corner of South Park St and West Wingra Dr. He’s also the one who smuggled the plans out of prison and then built the replica.

The Mobile Solitary Confinement Cell is a box truck refurbished to replicate the dimensions and fittings of a cell. You can go inside and slide close the door and try to summon up what you would feel if you knew the door would stay locked for weeks or years. You’ll find the sound of solitary is not silence, but a maddening barrage of screams and bangings.

Like an Animal in a Cage is a 45 minute staged reading of the words of some who have suffered extended solitary confinement stays.

*Like an Animal in a Cage* performance at Beloit College November 2018. Eugene Crisler is reading prisoners’s words about their mental and physical struggles surviving solitary confinement.

We hope the Mobile SC Cell and Animal in a Cage will give people a glimpse, feel a shiver of what too many Wisconsin prisoners experience 23 hours a day. We hope their reactions will encourage them to join us in advocating for maximum 15 day stays in solitary confinement in Wisconsin.

view inside another full scale model of a solitary confinement cell. It breaks down to flat that be transported in a box truck.

The Mobile SC Cell and Like an Animal travel around the state to any group who invites us. We charge a fee to help with gas and other expenses, but lack of money will not prevent us from reaching you. If we can find the money, we will come. See our fees page.

EMAIL – PASConfinement at gmail.com

More to come. thanks for visiting and seeing what we have up so far.

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