NYCLU: City Must Report on Dangerous Use of Solitary Confinement in Jails

The New York Civil Liberties Union will today testify before the New York City Council on the harms of solitary confinement on prisoners, prison staff and community safety, and in support of legislation that would require the commissioner of the Department of Correction to publicly report statistics on the use of solitary confinement in city jails.

Following a 2012 NYCLU class-action lawsuit, New York State agreed to historic reforms that limit solitary confinement in state prisons, including removing youth, pregnant women and developmentally disabled and intellectually challenged prisoners from extreme isolation. Under the NYCLU’s agreement, New York State became the largest prison system in the United States to prohibit the use of solitary confinement as a disciplinary measure against prisoners who are younger than 18. The agreement does not cover the city jails.

“Solitary confinement is one of the harshest and most extreme forms of punishment one human can inflict on another. Tragically, it is routinely used as a disciplinary tool of first resort, an abuse that endangers prisoners and corrections officials and decreases safety in prisons and our communities,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. “The appalling recent deaths of people in isolation at Rikers Island must sound the alarm that we as a society need to change the way we handle corrections, and we applaud the City Council for taking the critical first step toward reforming the use of solitary confinement in New York City by monitoring how it is used in our jails.”

The use of solitary confinement, also known as extreme isolation or punitive segregation, has been consistently identified as a cause of disastrous and sometimes permanent mental and physical health effects by experts including the American Psychological Association, particularly for adolescents and individuals with mental health conditions or disabilities. Last September, a 39-year-old prisoner at Rikers Island died after being found naked and covered in excrement in his cell from just seven days in solitary confinement. Earlier this year, another Rikers Island prisoner died of extreme heat while confined alone in an unsupervised, observation cell.

In New York City, 75 percent of incarcerated people are pretrial detainees, people our justice system says should be presumed innocent until it is proven they’re guilty who are often locked up simply because they cannot afford their bail. Yet on any given day, nearly 800 people are held in solitary confinement.

Nationally, researchers have found higher rates of recidivism among people released straight from solitary confinement to the community. It is generally acknowledged that many, if not most, prisoners who are forced into solitary do not present a safety risk and their infractions are often minor and non-violent. It is also abundantly clear that solitary has become a substitute for mental health treatment that is needed by growing numbers of inmates. But in New York City, the lack of transparency around solitary confinement means that the public knows practically nothing about who is there, why, for low long, or what happens to the person once he or she is out. The Department of Corrections has stopped publishing data about any of its prisoners on its website.

In its testimony, the NYCLU urges New York City to immediately remove vulnerable populations from solitary confinement, to separate prisoners only when absolutely necessary – and then only under the least restrictive conditions and for the shortest time possible – and to collect and analyze data on solitary confinement practices. The NYCLU also urges the city to provide the resources necessary to establish mental health facilities and a structure of alternatives forms of discipline that are more humane and more effective.

The NYCLU’s testimony today includes recommendations that the proposed legislation, Intro. 292, should be amended to include critical information, including:

• Race, gender, and mental and physical health of prisoners subjected to extreme isolation relative to the general prison population.
• Prisoners released from the trauma of solitary confinement directly to the streets.
• Prisoners subjected to extreme isolation who have not been convicted of any crime but are only in jail awaiting trial.
• Complaints of abuse both against and by prisoners in solitary confinement.

“We need to know why solitary confinement is being used so often, whether it unfairly targets certain people and how much of a risk it poses to the community,” said NYCLU Advocacy Director Johanna Miller. “We’re pleased that New York City Council recognizes the need for transparency on the dangers of solitary confinement. By amending Intro. 292 to include key data, we will be one step closer to establishing a more humane, functional and ultimately safe prison system for the benefit of all New Yorkers.”

Read a full copy of the NYCLU’s testimony here.