The mayor calls Solitair a safety measure. They call it torture.
More than half a century after he was locked up in solitary confinement on Rikers Island, Victor Pate still avoids elevators.
“The enclosure, that little space when the doors close, it’s so reminiscent of entering that cell and the door closing on me,” Mr. Pate, 71, said at a town hall meeting in support of a bill that would prohibit solitary confinement in most cases. cases in New York. “I didn’t get any further.”
For opponents of solitary confinement like Mr. Pate, who has served time on gun and car theft charges, prolonged isolation clearly qualifies as torture, causing long-lasting psychological damage and hampering rehabilitation. They call the bill, which is expected to pass the City Council on Wednesday, long overdue for the prison system, especially Rikers Island, which is at risk of a federal takeover after years of dysfunction.
But Mayor Eric Adams and the union representing corrections officers deny even the claim that city jails use solitary confinement for discipline. Instead, they say what they call “restrictive housing” is used to isolate dangerous people and protect prison staff and other inmates.
Citing more than 6,500 attacks on corrections officers in the past three years, they strongly oppose the bill, arguing that the use of solitary confinement has declined in recent years and that so have “key indicators related to violence.” ”
“Rather than promoting a humane environment within our prisons, the bill would promote an environment of fear and instability,” said Kayla Mamelak, spokeswoman for the mayor. “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.”
But critics insist that prisons do indeed use solitary as a discipline, with inmates, many of whom have not yet been tried or convicted, held separately from others in a cell for most of the day to punish them.
They say it is inhumane, arbitrary and counterproductive, and cite extensive research detailing the brutal physical and psychological toll.
Dr. Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist and expert on solitary confinement, called the council vote a historic opportunity.”
“New York City continues to practice the torture of solitary confinement in many different forms and under many different names,” he said. “But the essential practice and the resulting harm are the same: the social isolation and lack of meaningful human contact and engagement leads to deterioration of mental and physical health, including psychosis, depression, heart disease and death.”
The United Nations considers solitary confinement to be a form of torture when it lasts longer than fifteen consecutive days.
Juan E. Méndez, the former United Nations special rapporteur on torture, called the bill “a crucial step for New York City toward ending solitary confinement and respecting international law and human rights standards. ”
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 there.
Mr. Adams, who has resisted giving up control, recently named a new prison chief to work with the federal regulator that oversees the system to prevent a takeover and make prisons more humane to make.
Rikers Island is a jail, not a prison, and the inmates there are largely awaiting trial and have not been convicted.
Corrections officers there have wide discretion to throw people into “the box,” as special housing units are called, where they spend 23 hours a day in a small space, cut off from most human contact.
The council’s 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.
Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said the council was “determined to protect our most violent population rather than protect us.” He said the bill endangers lives by “putting politics before safety.”
City officials who oppose the bill said many of the current complaints go back years and that changes have been made to improve restrictive housing, including allowing most inmates held there to spend more hours outside of cells .
In 2021, state lawmakers limited solitary confinement to no more than 15 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, who was held at Rikers for three years, including about two years in solitary confinement, after being accused of carrying a backpack have stolen a teenager.
Solitary confinement, also called punitive segregation, has long been a persistent constant of prison life.
Darren Mack, 48, said he was first locked up in solitary on Rikers Island at age 17 while awaiting trial on armed robbery charges. An inmate in a neighboring cell covered his window with feces, he said in an interview, and another tried to hang himself before corrections officers knocked him down and then beat him “because he made them do paperwork” to record the incident. to write.
Candie Hailey, 40, said she spent about three years in isolation at Rikers starting in 2012. She repeatedly tried to hurt herself by cutting her arms and wrists with something sharp, such as pens, forks or shards from a plastic cup.
“You feel like an animal. It is hell on earth,” she said. “You think 24 hours a day about ways to commit suicide.”
Johnny Perez was first imprisoned on Rikers Island in 1996 after being arrested in the Bronx on gun charges at the age of 16. He was quickly sent to solitary confinement after a fight with another inmate and spent months there.
Mr. Perez, who now works for the National Religious Campaign against Torture, the lonely one had the feeling of a psychiatric ward. Prisoners screamed relentlessly, kicked the walls and banged on cell doors day and night, making sleep almost impossible, he said.
Mr. Pate, now co-director of the #HALT campaign for solitary confinement, spent several weeks in solitary confinement at Rikers after talking back to a corrections officer. He served two years for carrying a gun without a permit and stealing a car. He had more “box time” in state prison.
“It breaks your spirit,” he said. “You start talking to yourself, you count the bricks on the wall, you talk to imaginary friends, you write in an imaginary diary.”
“I have been free for 25 years now, but the collateral damage of what happened has left me mentally scarred,” he added.