Incarcerated Journalist Kwaneta Harris and CUNY Law’s Professor Deborah Zalesne Expose Sexual Violence in Solitary Confinement
A new piece in The Marshall Project by incarcerated journalist Kwaneta Harris lays bare the systemic sexual abuse, coercion, and retaliation faced by women in Texas prisons—especially those in solitary confinement. Harris, drawing from her own experience in isolation, exposes how guards exploit basic necessities like food, hygiene, and medical care to force compliance and how the system punishes those who speak out rather than holding abusers accountable.
Harris collaborated on this work with CUNY Law Professor Deborah Zalesne, whose scholarship interrogates the legal and structural conditions that enable carceral violence. Zalesne is co-author of Ending Isolation: The Case Against Solitary Confinement (Pluto Press, September 2025), written with incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell. The book combines Blackwell’s firsthand accounts of solitary confinement with Zalesne’s legal analysis and features writing from other incarcerated authors, including Harris.
Their work underscores solitary confinement as a system that breeds extreme abuse, reinforcing the urgent need for abolitionist legal interventions. Through research and collaboration, Zalesne’s scholarship supports and amplifies the voices of incarcerated writers who are exposing these human rights violations from the inside.
Harris’ reporting, in collaboration with Zalesne, demonstrates how legal academia can work alongside directly impacted communities to challenge state violence and demand systemic change.
Read the feature online at The Marshall Project.