Latest news with #AdamBryant
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
Death of man in Indiana jail highlights cruelty of solitary confinement: ‘A national disgrace'
Through the tinny reception on the jail's phone lines, 29-year-old Adam Bryant told his mom he didn't want to die. It was late 2022, and Bryant was incarcerated at Vigo county jail in Terre Haute, Indiana, a city roughly 75 miles west of Indianapolis. Bryant had been arrested for domestic battery on 8 December, and for most of the time between then and the 19 December phone call, he'd been unable to eat without vomiting. He had severe stomach pains, too, which only worsened when he was attacked and beaten. Some of his inmates had heard about his battery charge, and they wanted the ring Bryant was wearing. 'You're either gonna take care of yourself or they will let you die there,' his mother told him. Shortly after fighting with other inmates, Bryant was placed in solitary confinement, where he spent the last five days of his life with minimal human interaction. His condition worsened: he shed more weight, became more fatigued, and even started hallucinating. Video footage shows staff members checking on other inmates while paying little attention to Bryant. That same video evidence contradicts the jail's claims that Bryant received his medication and prescribed protein shake on the final day of his life. (Vigo county officials did not respond to questions for this story.) As the clock approached midnight on Christmas Eve, he sat on the floor of his solitary cell and tried to reach the intercom button that would alert the staff that he needed help. He managed to press it, but most of his attempts were in vain; his arms were simply too weak. Shortly after midnight, he died of hyponatremia – low sodium concentration in the blood. His death – and the neglect that preceded – is at the center of a new lawsuit, as Bryant's family sues several employees of the Vigo county jail and sheriff's office for violating his constitutional rights. His traumatic final days also highlight the cruelty and dangers of solitary confinement or 'restrictive housing', a practice of isolating people that has long been decried by advocates, attorneys and mental health professionals. The practice became more popular in the US in the 1980s and 1990s, as the prison population soared and overpopulation became more common, leading to a new reliance on isolated units. Now, despite a growing mountain of evidence and repeated reform attempts, the practice continues, creating massive trauma for families across the US. Matthew Lowen, an associate director of the Vera Institute's Restoring Promise Initiative, says experts generally agree that somewhere between 75,000 and 80,000 people are locked in solitary confinement in the US on any given day. But no one knows the exact number, in part because of lax oversight and the many forms of isolation employed by jails and prisons. '[Solitary confinement] continues to grow in the sense that there's new facilities that are being built and designed specifically for the use of isolation in near-total cell confinement,' Lowen said. 'But then there's also sort of the ad hoc or unofficial forms of isolation or solitary confinement lockdowns, where it's either staff shortages or facility lockdowns for a myriad of reasons, and that could just result in people not being let out of their cells.' Research indicates solitary confinement is particularly traumatic for people who enter incarceration struggling with their mental health or an addiction. Bryant was struggling with both. Two days before his 8 December arrest, he asked a therapist for help getting into rehab. Solitary confinement can often be fatal for people struggling with mental illness, and any amount of time spent in isolated conditions increases the risk of death after release, according to a study by the Jama Network. The study notes that people were 24% more likely to die within their first year out of jail or prison – and 127% more likely to die from an opioid overdose in the first two weeks after release. 'The real abandonment of people with mental health challenges in this country is just a national disgrace,' said Jean Casella, director of the non-profit Solitary Watch. 'The people who are unhoused, the people with mental illness who are on the streets, those are the same people who are going to end up in jail eventually in the prison systems eventually. And they are way more likely to land in solitary.' Casella's organization was born from the lack of significant oversight of solitary confinement. She and her team have spent years documenting how isolated treatment like what Bryant experienced does not make people safer (including guards and corrections officers). In many facilities where the use of solitary confinement has been reduced or eliminated, violent incidents have decreased. Additionally, Casella notes that putting people in isolation presents new roadblocks to one of the purported intents of the criminal justice system: rehabilitation. 'Maintaining contact with family and loved ones has been shown to be one of the most effective ways of not only maintaining sort of order in prison, but also easing people's transitions and re-entry back into society,' Casella said. 'It's totally destructive to cut off those connections.' There are also significant roadblocks to reforming this practice. The Biden administration promised reductions in the use of solitary confinement, but Casella says it didn't create significant change. Biden's administration poured millions more dollars into studying 'restrictive housing', despite the wealth of studies already in existence. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of people in solitary confinement increased. Politics has become one of the biggest roadblocks to meaningful reform. Earlier this year, in New York, more than 11,000 New York prison guards launched a strike that, in part, demanded the rollback of the Halt Act, which capped isolation at 15 days and banned its use on vulnerable groups. In response, Governor Kathy Hochul suspended parts of the law for 90 days and deployed the national guard. Advocates condemned the rollback as a dangerous return to the inhumanity of the pre-Halt days, and a judge reversed the rollback on 2 July. Casella added that, with Trump in office, it was unlikely that significant reforms would happen at the federal level, increasing the importance of state and local battles. She's hoping to see more reform-minded candidates win those races and push for incarceration models in line with the Scandinavian approach, which promotes education, job training, therapy and mental health support, as well as family visits and reintegration programs. Organizations like Lowen's have had success with humane approaches to incarceration. In 2017, the Vera Institute's Restoring Promise Initiative partnered with the Connecticut department of correction to transform a unit at Cheshire correctional institution – once a 22-hour lockdown maximum-security facility – into a mentorship-based, dignity-centered space for young adults. The result: 'We eliminated violence on that unit,' said Lowen. Incidents dropped across the prison, showing that training and restorative practices can work. 'The bottom line really is that it doesn't make people living or working inside prisons or jails any safer,' Lowen said. 'It doesn't make the community safer, and in fact, it could actually contribute to folks being less safe.' The experts interviewed for this story said Bryant's case was a clear example of how solitary confinement is often unnecessary and needlessly cruel. On that 19 December phone call with his mother, he asked her not to tell his father about what he was experiencing. She told him she wouldn't, then she encouraged him to stay strong. 'Oh Adam, I'm so sorry,' she said, fighting back tears. 'I love you.' 'I love you, too,' he said before hanging up.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- The Guardian
Death of man in Indiana jail highlights cruelty of solitary confinement: ‘A national disgrace'
Through the tinny reception on the jail's phone lines, 29-year-old Adam Bryant told his mom he didn't want to die. It was late 2022, and Bryant was incarcerated at Vigo county jail in Terre Haute, Indiana, a city roughly 75 miles west of Indianapolis. Bryant had been arrested for domestic battery on 8 December, and for most of the time between then and the 19 December phone call, he'd been unable to eat without vomiting. He had severe stomach pains, too, which only worsened when he was attacked and beaten. Some of his inmates had heard about his battery charge, and they wanted the ring Bryant was wearing. 'You're either gonna take care of yourself or they will let you die there,' his mother told him. Shortly after fighting with other inmates, Bryant was placed in solitary confinement, where he spent the last five days of his life with minimal human interaction. His condition worsened: he shed more weight, became more fatigued, and even started hallucinating. Video footage shows staff members checking on other inmates while paying little attention to Bryant. That same video evidence contradicts the jail's claims that Bryant received his medication and prescribed protein shake on the final day of his life. (Vigo county officials did not respond to questions for this story.) As the clock approached midnight on Christmas Eve, he sat on the floor of his solitary cell and tried to reach the intercom button that would alert the staff that he needed help. He managed to press it, but most of his attempts were in vain; his arms were simply too weak. Shortly after midnight, he died of hyponatremia – low sodium concentration in the blood. His death – and the neglect that preceded – is at the center of a new lawsuit, as Bryant's family sues several employees of the Vigo county jail and sheriff's office for violating his constitutional rights. His traumatic final days also highlight the cruelty and dangers of solitary confinement or 'restrictive housing', a practice of isolating people that has long been decried by advocates, attorneys and mental health professionals. The practice became more popular in the US in the 1980s and 1990s, as the prison population soared and overpopulation became more common, leading to a new reliance on isolated units. Now, despite a growing mountain of evidence and repeated reform attempts, the practice continues, creating massive trauma for families across the US. Matthew Lowen, an associate director of the Vera Institute's Restoring Promise Initiative, says experts generally agree that somewhere between 75,000 and 80,000 people are locked in solitary confinement in the US on any given day. But no one knows the exact number, in part because of lax oversight and the many forms of isolation employed by jails and prisons. '[Solitary confinement] continues to grow in the sense that there's new facilities that are being built and designed specifically for the use of isolation in near-total cell confinement,' Lowen said. 'But then there's also sort of the ad hoc or unofficial forms of isolation or solitary confinement lockdowns, where it's either staff shortages or facility lockdowns for a myriad of reasons, and that could just result in people not being let out of their cells.' Research indicates solitary confinement is particularly traumatic for people who enter incarceration struggling with their mental health or an addiction. Bryant was struggling with both. Two days before his 8 December arrest, he asked a therapist for help getting into rehab. Solitary confinement can often be fatal for people struggling with mental illness, and any amount of time spent in isolated conditions increases the risk of death after release, according to a study by the Jama Network. The study notes that people were 24% more likely to die within their first year out of jail or prison – and 127% more likely to die from an opioid overdose in the first two weeks after release. 'The real abandonment of people with mental health challenges in this country is just a national disgrace,' said Jean Casella, director of the non-profit Solitary Watch. 'The people who are unhoused, the people with mental illness who are on the streets, those are the same people who are going to end up in jail eventually in the prison systems eventually. And they are way more likely to land in solitary.' Casella's organization was born from the lack of significant oversight of solitary confinement. She and her team have spent years documenting how isolated treatment like what Bryant experienced does not make people safer (including guards and corrections officers). In many facilities where the use of solitary confinement has been reduced or eliminated, violent incidents have decreased. Additionally, Casella notes that putting people in isolation presents new roadblocks to one of the purported intents of the criminal justice system: rehabilitation. 'Maintaining contact with family and loved ones has been shown to be one of the most effective ways of not only maintaining sort of order in prison, but also easing people's transitions and re-entry back into society,' Casella said. 'It's totally destructive to cut off those connections.' There are also significant roadblocks to reforming this practice. The Biden administration promised reductions in the use of solitary confinement, but Casella says it didn't create significant change. Biden's administration poured millions more dollars into studying 'restrictive housing', despite the wealth of studies already in existence. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of people in solitary confinement increased. Politics has become one of the biggest roadblocks to meaningful reform. Earlier this year, in New York, more than 11,000 New York prison guards launched a strike that, in part, demanded the rollback of the Halt Act, which capped isolation at 15 days and banned its use on vulnerable groups. In response, Governor Kathy Hochul suspended parts of the law for 90 days and deployed the national guard. Advocates condemned the rollback as a dangerous return to the inhumanity of the pre-Halt days, and a judge reversed the rollback on 2 July. Casella added that, with Trump in office, it was unlikely that significant reforms would happen at the federal level, increasing the importance of state and local battles. She's hoping to see more reform-minded candidates win those races and push for incarceration models in line with the Scandinavian approach, which promotes education, job training, therapy and mental health support, as well as family visits and reintegration programs. Organizations like Lowen's have had success with humane approaches to incarceration. In 2017, the Vera Institute's Restoring Promise Initiative partnered with the Connecticut department of correction to transform a unit at Cheshire correctional institution – once a 22-hour lockdown maximum-security facility – into a mentorship-based, dignity-centered space for young adults. The result: 'We eliminated violence on that unit,' said Lowen. Incidents dropped across the prison, showing that training and restorative practices can work. 'The bottom line really is that it doesn't make people living or working inside prisons or jails any safer,' Lowen said. 'It doesn't make the community safer, and in fact, it could actually contribute to folks being less safe.' The experts interviewed for this story said Bryant's case was a clear example of how solitary confinement is often unnecessary and needlessly cruel. On that 19 December phone call with his mother, he asked her not to tell his father about what he was experiencing. She told him she wouldn't, then she encouraged him to stay strong. 'Oh Adam, I'm so sorry,' she said, fighting back tears. 'I love you.' 'I love you, too,' he said before hanging up.
New York Times
04-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
A Wider View Into the ‘Corner Office'
How do you become a chief executive? And what does it take to succeed once you get there? In 2009, the New York Times reporter Adam Bryant began Corner Office, a column that features interviews with business leaders, to answer such questions. In eight years, Mr. Bryant spoke with 525 executives for the column. David Gelles, who took over Corner Office in 2018, spoke with about 100 more before moving to The Times's Climate desk in 2022. The Corner Office had been vacant — until this spring, when a new writer, Jordyn Holman, stepped in. Before Ms. Holman joined The Times in 2022 to cover consumerism and the retail industry, she worked at Bloomberg News, where she also wrote for Businessweek, and made frequent appearances on Bloomberg TV, interviewing business leaders all along the way. Now, as new policies from the Trump administration cause economic turbulence, Ms. Holman is asking top executives how they're navigating a changing business landscape. 'There's a phrase that people say every year: 'It's never been more complicated to be a C.E.O.,'' Ms. Holman said in an interview. 'My thesis on this is that, in 2025, it really is the most complicated time.' Ms. Holman discussed the social role of businesses, the new perspective she brings to the column and what she hopes readers take away from her conversations. These are edited excerpts. What about this assignment appealed to you? I have always talked to C.E.O.s within my business reporting, but this gives me the opportunity to go deeper to really explain who these people are. I think, in 2025, a lot of people have questions about who's running the brands, who's behind the companies that they give their money to, or that they give their loyalty to in some form. This column gives me the opportunity to go to these companies and leaders and ask those questions that others have. What about the column's previous writers' approaches do you want to maintain? And is there anything new that you'd like to bring? In the past, the column began with the executive's life story and then you move into the business. For my iteration of the column, we're focusing initially on the most topical parts of the business and then backing into people's life story. We went with that route because I want the column to feel like it's entering a conversation that people are already having. But then we look back at this person and how they got to this point. Your previous reporting has often touched on the ways business intersects with race, gender and class. Chief executives of large American companies have historically skewed white, male and upper-class. Are these topics going to be reflected in your approach to the column? Absolutely. That has always been the lens I use with business reporting. When I was at Bloomberg, I was on their Equality team and was covering race, class and gender in corporate America. I think this Corner Office beat will now allow me to put that hat back on. I know that I'm going to ask different types of questions. I've lived all across the country. I grew up in Chicago, went to school in L.A., lived in the South for a bit, and I live in New York now. I want to make sure we're being geographically diverse, racially diverse, gender diverse. I will be bringing my past experiences, my worldview, into these conversations. Your latest interview — your second since taking the reins — is with Jonathan Neman, the chief executive of Sweetgreen. How did you choose him? Sweetgreen is known for having better-for-you ingredients, and now we're having a national conversation, spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., about better-for-you ingredients. Companies always want to stay out of politics, but what does it mean when your company's core values kind of hit up against a political conversation? I think that's inherently interesting. What are your hopes for the column as a whole? I hope it captures this moment of leadership. Right now, it feels like there are so many things to address. There's what's happening with tariffs that could cause more inflation. Could there be a recession? How do we talk about D.E.I.? A lot of people are afraid to speak out, or don't quite know what to say. I hope this column features people who are able to move through it and can explain how they do what they do in a very intense business, political and social environment. Do you think there are lessons or wisdom to be gained from these business leaders that people can use in other areas of their lives? Yes, we all have to make decisions. We all have our own stories, and I think what you see from these columns — the past ones, and what I hope to bring in this iteration — is that your upbringing, your experiences, your first internship, your first job, does add up to something. Everyone's story matters and can resonate with people.
