Tell Governor Youngkin to amend solitary confinement bills HB2487 and SB 887

Act Now

The ACLU of Virginia has been working to end solitary confinement for years, so we were delighted to read recent headlines heralding the end of solitary confinement in Virginia.

There's just one problem: the bill language currently on Governor Youngkin's desk won't necessarily improve conditions for people incarcerated in Virginia.

A strong solitary bill would:

  • Include a time limit preventing people from being held in solitary longer than 15 days in a given 60-day period.
  • Apply these time limits to all units in which people could be locked in their cell for more than 20 hours, no matter what name VADOC uses for them.
  • Narrowly limit the reasons why people can be placed in solitary confinement.

The current bills do none of those things. Instead, the bill language currently before Governor Youngkin could give VADOC more discretion to put people in solitary, and it provides no enforcement mechanism for transparency or for people in solitary to challenge their placement there.

We need you to act now. Tell Governor Youngkin to amend the solitary bills to include real reform.

Message recipients:
Governor Glenn Youngkin

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Your Message
Use the form to send a message to the Governor.

As a proud Virginian I was delighted to read recent headlines heralding the end of solitary confinement in Virginia. But when I dug a little deeper, I realized there’s just one problem. The bill language currently on your desk won't necessarily improve conditions for people incarcerated in Virginia. But you can change that: you can amend the solitary bills to close the gaps and meaningfully reform a practice that is cruel and inhumane.

The simple fact is these bills have no teeth to make things better for people held in solitary in Virginia, and plenty of language that VADOC could use to make things worse.

So today I’m asking you – if you really want substantive reform – to amend the bills. It's within your power to make sure the solitary bills include oversight of VADOC so the agency complies with the reforms that are in the legislation, and it's within your power, too, to amend the bills to include meaningful restrictions on the reasons and length of time someone may be kept in solitary conditions.

Without those amendments, these bills will not only fail to be the end of solitary confinement in Virginia – they will sadly fail to even qualify as reform.

Sincerely,

[First Name] [Last Name]

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