Anthony Charles Graves

Michelle Deitch is professor and founder of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

Anthony Graves is a criminal justice reform advocate who spent 18 and a half years in prison in Texas before being exonerated in 2010.

And Sandra Guerra Thompson is a law professor and the former director of the Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Houston Law Center.

Good morning to you all.

What, what have courts said about solitary confinement to date?

Well, Michelle might be better suited to, to speak to this, uh, topic, but, I mean, in, in my view of this, from what I see, we have sort of moved in the wrong direction, um, creating, um, a number of supermax prisons that essentially put every single person in solitary confinement.

Um, you know, in the past, I think before, um, Anthony Graves was wrongly put on death row in Texas, um, those inmates actually had opportunities to work during the day, um, and so they were not confined on, by themselves all day long.

Um, but that's pretty routine now, and even for a whole lot of other people, we call it administrative segregation.

Thank you.

I was reminded of having the privilege of seeing a gentleman named Anthony Graves speak here in Austin years ago.

He was wrongfully imprisoned.

for around 20 years.