Brandon Robinson is the Campaign and Policy Director of the Stop Torture RI Coalition (STRI), a statewide alliance of community organizers, formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones, direct service providers, students, and advocates united in the fight to end the use of prolonged solitary confinement among other prison reform initiatives. Brandon himself is formerly incarcerated, having served 15 years in the ACI between the ages of 19 and 34. Following his reentry, he achieved a B.A. from College Unbound and an M.A. from Roger Williams University. He is now a doctoral student at William James College in organizational leadership and psychology with a concentration in nonprofit management and nongovernmental organizations in addition to his active roles in grassroots organizations.
Christina Li: Readers may come from different types of county-level, state-level, even national-level carceral systems. Could you give a brief overview of Rhode Island’s unified state prison system, the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI)?
Brandon Robinson: The ACI is made up of five to six buildings. They have an intake service center which holds non-sentenced individuals accused of committing a crime and going through the court process. Once they’re found guilty or take a deal, depending on their time or their charge, they could be sent to one of the other buildings, which could be minimum security, medium security, maximum security, or super maximum security. Those are four buildings right altogether. They used to be a second medium security, but they sold it back to Pepsi. Then there’s a women’s prison facility as well.
CL: Given Rhode Island’s smaller state size and higher population density, how have we seen the effects of the criminal justice system play out especially around probation and reentry—known as community corrections?
BR: Unfortunately, Rhode Island actually has the people serving the longest amounts of probation in the country. They say one in three people are on probation in Rhode Island. We’ve met with the judge’s people. We’ve met with the attorney general and the governor’s people. They work with the mindset to have less people in prison and more people on the street—that is the reason why we have more people on long extents of probation. How that looks is if an individual receives 20 years in Rhode Island, they would do seven years in prison and 13 years on the street on probation, which sounds great.
Now imagine you’re on the street for 10 years and you have three years left on probation and you bought a house and you started school and you started a family and you started a business and you got a new car—then you get a disorderly conduct. Now they’re like: Listen, we’re going to arrest you, erasing these whole three years left, unless you take 10 more years of probation. And you’re like, damn. Now I got to take more probation. That’s the situation right there. They give you more and more and that’s how they just keep you in the cycle.
In regards to reentry, when I was young, they used to tell us, “don’t hang around your family and your friends.” We didn’t understand it. We didn’t understand what they meant. Like, how can I not go back to my family and friends? That’s all I know. But it’s true. I think it’s important for people to want to surround themselves with positive people, to have a positive support system, be working on a positive future, earning their income legitimately, building themselves, putting themselves in a better position for the future.
CL: Looking within the prisons, spaces usually shut off from the public, there has been a string of deaths in solitary confinement units. Could you talk more about this pattern in RI prisons and what it means for your continued work, including the recently introduced Willie Washington Jr. Act?
BR: Five individuals in the ACI died from medical neglect in 2024 alone. One of those individuals being Willie Washington Jr., who was a 25-year-old young man, who was in severe pain and continuously asked for help from the medical staff over a four day period and was only given baby Tylenol. He was throwing up and defecating profusely and still was only being given baby Tylenol and told to lay down—to the point that we received a letter from his roommate who provided more medical attention to him than the nurses did. We also received a first account from him. Willie described a burning sensation first going up his legs and then to his arms. These were his last hours. After that, he died shortly. It got to the point that the roommate was kicking the door to the point that they got him. The nurse finally came. They got him into the wheelchair. The people in the yard that saw him going through the yard said his body seemed lifeless to the point that the nurse even dropped him—dropped his body in the yard onto the ground. Individuals in the yard helped put his body back inside the wheelchair. That was the last time he was seen alive. And we don’t even know which part he was alive and which part he wasn’t in that scenario that I’m describing to you right there.
Another individual was William Page, who had just seen a medical professional who told him he was in good health and just needed to do some cardio. So he went on the basketball court to play some basketball to get some cardio in. He ended up having a heart attack and fell onto the ground. The correction officer called for medical help. In the ACI, there’s three codes. There’s a code white, a code blue, a code red. A code white is a medical emergency. They walk to code whites. A code blue is a fight. They run to code blues. A code red is a fire. They run to code reds. They called code white. The nurse walked down, realized she forgot her bag with her defibrillator, got her bag, then walked back, knowing he’s having a heart attack. He died before she could get back.
Originally, we were like, we need transparency. We need body cams in there so we know what’s going on and what’s happening to our loved ones. And we need to be able to hold the bad actors accountable. We would like to be able to hold the correctional officers and the medical staff accountable because while Willie Washington Jr. was in pain, while William Page was on the ground, were these correctional officers administering life-saving measures? They’re supposed to be trained as first responders. It would have been great to have that on body cameras to be able to witness and count the minutes and the seconds that she took walking and to see how much pep she had in her steps knowing she was dealing with a dying man. So we want to know; we want the evidence to show that they were not providing life-saving measures and providing first aid to these individuals. That’s why we have the body camera bill for RI correctional staff that is named after Willie Washington Jr.
CL: With the 2026 Legislative Session approaching, how are the Stop Torture RI coalition and other grassroots organizations working to reform the system through advocacy-based and community-based approaches? As you explained earlier, the Willie Washington Jr. Act is one of these initiatives. What other bills are currently active?
BR: We’re actually working on three to four policies currently. My main policy that I’m working on is the solitary confinement policy. We’ve actually been working on the solitary confinement policy since 2021. The idea behind it is, in the beginning, they were holding individuals in solitary confinement for a year and or more. When a person is held in solitary confinement for an extended period of time, they start to experience sensory deprivation—they can experience sensory deprivation anywhere from 15 days on. So to be held there for a year or more is extreme.
Individuals experiencing sensory deprivation start to hallucinate, self-mutilate. They start to hear things, see things, and eventually commit suicide. The fact that correctional officers witnessed this and still complain currently that they want to go back to those times when they’re able to do these things to individuals is just nonsense. We at the Stop Torture Coalition have been fighting against these policies that were enacted in the ACI through the legislative process.
Originally, our slogan was to close down high security. Shortly after, we changed our model from closing down high security and ending solitary confinement to reforming solitary confinement. I am of the mindset that individuals need to be held accountable, but they don’t need to be tortured.
When your child or your pet does something wrong, you need to hold them accountable, but you don’t need to torture them to do so. People are in prison because they did something wrong. Everybody is not guilty and everybody is not innocent also. So people need to be held accountable because we want them to come out and return back into our communities and, you know, be able to come out and hold their own selves accountable. While they’re inside, we want them to be able to participate in rehabilitative and educational programming because it helps reduce the recidivism rate by 27 to 42 percent, which helps them be able to build and maintain personal and professional relationships via their families and their work establishments.
Brian Redonis was a 27-year-old young man who, after receiving added-on time, told the correctional officers that he couldn’t do it anymore. He told the correctional officers this, and they just laughed it off—brushed him off. The next time they came around from the county, he was hanging from his bed. So for solitary to be reduced from a year and/or more to a maximum 30 days is a victory. Our goal now for that bill is to codify that.
At the same time, we’ve been working on the Bail on 32 policy with Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE). When individuals are out in the community and are finally able to be established in the community, but if they have a little mishap like a disorderly conduct charge, they’ll get bail on a charge, but they’ll get held on a violation. It’s supposed to be for 10 days, but it typically ends up being 30 to 90 days. In that time frame, they could lose everything they worked hard for. What we’re looking to do there is get them bail on a violation and at least until proven guilty. We want them to be innocent until proven guilty, so give them bail until proven guilty. If they’re found guilty on a charge, then you can hold them on a violation. But if he’s not guilty on a charge, then where’s the violation?
CL: In this work, there’s a lot of focus on highlighting lived experiences. As college students and individuals affiliated with institutions like Brown, identities of high positionality in the state, what could engagement with STRI’s causes look like? What does the term “lived experience” mean to you and others who hold it and/or are working in carceral justice, and how can we continue to center it?
BR: Lived experience means an individual who’s formerly incarcerated. You know, who’s been through it—who’s recovered from the lifestyle. The lifestyle itself can be addictive. Whether you’re a recovering addict or a drug dealer, it’s still lived experience.
The way you can help support and uplift, just like we’re doing, is policy work. By doing research, by doing the bills, by doing rallies and protests, by helping organize letters from inside the ACI. It’s when we are doing legislative hearings, helping host events—like we just did a speakers panel. We do have another new bill we are working on. It’s going to be about expungement and the Clean Slate Act, so things to help get the word out—passing out literature, putting up flyers, making social media posts—would also support us. We’ve been talking about Rhode Islanders being on probation for extended periods of time. It’s about time for them to get off probation and stop being held back by their past.
*This interview was edited for length and clarity.