New York City to ban solitary confinement, defying Mayor Adams
The City Council is expected to approve a bill Wednesday that would make New York the largest U.S. city to ban solitary confinement in city jails in most cases. This is part of a national campaign to end a practice that critics say amounts to torture.
The council’s push to ban solitary confinement has been stalled for years due to concerns about staff shortages and violence against prison staff. Mayor Eric Adams has argued since taking office two years ago that isolating inmates is an important tool to help protect them.
The mayor and the corrections officers union, which also strongly oppose the bill, are expected to continue lobbying against the ban until the vote. But the bill’s sponsors and supporters say there are enough votes to pass the bill and override Mr. Adams if he vetoes it.
There is momentum behind this effort: A group of 11 members of Congress wrote a letter last week support the billincluding Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a key ally of the mayor, and Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader in the House of Representatives.
Left-wing members of the 51-member Council had pushed City Council President Adrienne Adams to schedule a vote on the bill. which now has 38 sponsors.
The city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, who is a sponsor of the bill, said isolating inmates was cruel and that the bill still allowed people to be separated when necessary.
“Losing privileges is something that is understandable,” he said. “The loss of a basic human right should not happen.”
Solitary confinement, also called punitive segregation, is the practice of keeping an inmate alone in a cell for most of the day as punishment. The bill would ban the practice during an emergency after a four-hour “de-escalation period.” Corrections officers would be required to check on inmates every 15 minutes during that period and refer health concerns to medical staff.
Other local governments and states have tried to restrict solitary confinement. Last year, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a California bill to restrict the practice, saying the “too broad” ban could jeopardize the safety of staff and other detainees. Democrats in Congress introduced a bill this year to ban it nationwide.
In New York State, lawmakers in 2021 limited solitary confinement to no more than fifteen consecutive days. Six years earlier, the practice was banned for all inmates 21 and younger in New York City following the death of Kalief Browder, a young man who was held at the troubled Rikers prison complex for three years, including about two years in solitary confinement.
Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for the mayor, said in a statement that Mr. Adams encouraged Council members to oppose the bill.
“Rather than promoting a humane environment within our prisons, the Council bill would promote an environment of fear and instability,” he said. “It would make it more difficult to protect people in custody, and the predominantly Black and brown workers charged with keeping them safe, from violent individuals.”
Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said in a statement that the council was “determined to protect our most violent population rather than protect us.” He said there have been more than 6,500 assaults on corrections officers in the past three years, including 51 sexual assaults on female officers.
“This reckless legislation will needlessly endanger thousands of lives by putting politics over safety,” he said.
The Council’s push comes as federal officials have attempted to wrest control of Rikers Island from the Adams administration in response to ongoing violence and chaos. Mr. Adams recently appointed a new head of the city’s prisons to work with the federal regulator that oversees the system to prevent a federal takeover and make the prisons more humane.
At the same time, Ms. Adams, the Council President, has pushed for Rikers to be closed, despite resistance from the mayor. The city must close it by August 2027.
Ms. Adams said in a statement that she had worked with unions, advocates and Mr. Williams, the public advocate, to find consensus on a solitary confinement law that would make “our city safer, healthier and more humane.”
“The physical and psychological harm caused by solitary confinement increases death and violence at Rikers and ultimately makes us all less safe,” she said.
Prison reform advocates praised the Council’s bill, saying it was long overdue. Johnny Perez, director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture’s U.S. prison program, called it a “major step forward” that would “show other states and localities what is actually possible and what real alternatives look like.”
Researchers say prolonged isolation causes long-lasting psychological damage to people in prison and hinders their rehabilitation.
Tamara Carter, whose son Brandon Rodriguez died by suicide at Rikers in 2021, testified at a City Council hearing last year in support of the ban. Her son had struggled with mental illness since he was a boy.
“I honestly think if he hadn’t been put in solitary confinement, he would still be alive today,” she said. “He was already suffering from a mental health crisis – he should have been admitted to hospital, not where his mind could eat away at him.”
Mrs Carter said she is still haunted by imagining her son’s final moments. He was found hanged in a so-called shower cage, a small shower cubicle typically used by inmates to rinse off after being hit with pepper spray, but sometimes used to isolate inmates.
“I couldn’t save my son’s life, but if I could help save someone else’s life, that’s so important to me,” she said.
The bill would ban the use of shower cages. It would also require that inmates held in restrictive housing — a separate housing area for violent inmates — in groups receive the same programs as those held outside of it and be out of cells for at least 14 hours each day.
That of the city current rules on punitive segregation place inmates in a restrictive housing area where people are confined to their cells for up to 23 hours a day as punishment for a violent crime, although prison officials say they are offered seven hours out of their cells.
It is difficult to know how many inmates are being held in solitary confinement at any given time. At a September 2022 hearing, Louis A. Molina, then head of the Department of Corrections, said 117 people were in restricted housing at the time.
The deaths of several people in solitary confinement at Rikers over the past decade prompted elected officials to continue pushing for the ban. In 2019, Layleen Polanco, a transgender woman, suffered a seizure and died while in solitary after guards failed to check on her. Her family received a $5.9 million settlement, the largest ever for the death of an inmate at Rikers Island.
The The city council held a hearing on the ban last fall, but the bill stalled over concerns from unions representing healthcare workers at Rikers, including the powerful 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. As part of the negotiations, health care workers will not be required to make rounds for inmates in a “de-escalation” emergency, and corrections officers will conduct required checks.
Carlina Rivera, a Manhattan councilwoman and another sponsor of the bill, said unions were concerned they did not have enough staff to conduct the rounds.
“We have tried to make compromises while staying true to the core of the bill,” she said.
Still, advocates have raised concerns in the past about whether corrections officials can properly ensure inmates are safe. Mr. Williams said the ban wouldn’t solve everything violated at Rikers, but it would meaningfully end a terrible practice.
“We understand that there is still so much more to be done,” he said. “These issues have been out of sight and out of mind for too long.”