In a Texas maximum security prison, Dennis Wayne Hope has served 27 years in solitary confinement – more than half his life. On any given night in the US, more than 120,000 prisoners are isolated just like him. United Nations experts have strongly urged a global ban on solitary confinement that lasts more than 15 days, denouncing it as a form of psychological torture. Today, the story of how Dennis set out to change that and what it says about prison in the United States.

In this episode: 

• Rhana Natour (@RNatourious), correspondent for Al Jazeera's Fault Lines.

Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Khaled Soltan and our host, Kevin Hirten, in for Malika Bilal. Miranda Lin fact-checked this episode.

Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik. Munera AlDosari and Adam Abou-Gad are our engagement producers.

Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.

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