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���������� Note: While a recent settlement has set limits to solitary confinement for certain groups of people, mental health advocates continue to advocate for reform of the practice in its entirety. Experts have indicated that even if a person had no mental health problems before going into a SHU (solitary housing unit), they are very likely to leave with one, and exacerbate any standing behavioral challenges in the process. As Harvey Rosenthal is noted below, we need a systemic approach to affecting this change. In solidarity with MHASC we are supporting this year’s HALT bill (Humane Alternatives to Long Term Solitary Confinement Act) which would limit isolated confinement to no more than 15 days for any individual. We also support efforts to keep people out of jails and prisons on the front end, which would include Crisis Intervention Teams as a way to engage and train police officers dealing with behavioral crisis situations. Both Bills are being sponsored by Assemblyman Aubry of Queens, who called solitary confinement “an issue whose time has come”.

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Prisoner Advocates Praise Solitary Confinement Reform

Mental Health of Prisoners Stressed in Drive for Change

Albany Times Union; Paul Grandahl, 2/21/2014

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Prisoner advocates praised this week’s legal settlement that limits the state’s use of solitary confinement with inmates who are pregnant, younger than 18 or developmentally disabled. But they vowed to fight for additional reforms, especially on behalf of mentally ill inmates, in a decades-long battle to end what many experts deem “cruel and unusual��punishment.”

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The new regulations on extreme isolation were announced in a legal settlement Wednesday by the��and the state ��of a lawsuit that grew out of a 2012 NYCLU report, “Boxed In.” It documented that roughly 4,000 prisoners were locked down for 23 hours a day for violating prison rules and the average time in isolation was 150 days. The report found psychological damage and a rise in suicide attempts from punitive segregation known as a special housing unit, or SHU. Prisoners call it��.

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“The tide is turning nationally on these practices,” said��, the NYCLU’s lead lawyer in the case, and he welcomed “an alignment between correction officials and advocates who are moving in the same direction instead of fighting each other in a lawsuit for��decades.”

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Anthony Annucci, acting commissioner of corrections and community supervision, said the settlement makes “historic and appropriate changes in the use and conditions of special housing��units.”

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Although prisoner advocates criticize solitary confinement as inhumane, correction officials defend it as an effective method to control unruly��inmates.

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Last year, there were 8,197 mentally ill inmates in a prison population of about 54,643, according to DOCCS; the number continues to decline from a peak of 71,600 in��1999.

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“There has been progress for mentally ill inmates following a legal settlement and legislation in 2007, but more work needs to be done,” said��, executive director of the��. “We’re working on crisis intervention and new legislation aimed at diverting mentally ill people from prison in the first place. We continue to urge better training for police and first responders that could prevent escalation of situations that end in prison��sentences.”

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Prisoners in solitary are confined to cells 6 feet by 8 feet, with almost no human contact. In newer prisons, a caged balcony is unlocked remotely one hour per day so inmates can breathe fresh air. Lights and a shower are controlled remotely. Meals are pushed through a slot in a reinforced cell��door.

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Dr.��, a psychiatrist in the Boston area who coined the term “SHU syndrome,” found that prisoners confined for lengthy periods in solitary show a range of symptoms of mental illness: depression, increased paranoia, agitation, manic activity, delusions and��suicide.

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“I was locked up in a cage like an animal. It’s torture,”��, 45, of Cohoes, told the��last year when he was released from prison after nearly 20 months of a 40-month incarceration in solitary confinement. He described frequent suicidal thoughts in The Box and ongoing sleeplessness, nightmares and crying��fits.

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Three of the 14 prisoners who committed suicide in ����������’s prisons in 2012 were in solitary confinement, DOCCS��said.

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“The settlement is a very positive step forward and limiting the SHU for those under 18 is significant, but we need more diversion, more appropriate mental health treatment and better family engagement,” said��, CEO of the Mental Health Association in ������������State.

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A study by his staff found that more than 70 percent of teenagers in the juvenile justice system have mental health��issues.

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“The number of people with mental illness in the SHU remains high, and I still see this as a work in progress,” said��, of Schenectady, a retired advocate for the����in New York��State.

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New York Lawmakers Introduce Bill to End Long-Term Solitary Confinement

Solitary Watch; Jean Casella, 2/4/2014

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“I’m here in a steel coffin,” Jessica Casanova’s nephew wrote to her from an isolation cell.��”I’m breathing, but I’m dead.”��Her nephew, she said,��”has never been��the same” after��spending��time in solitary confinement, and his experience compelled her to speak out for the thousands held in��extreme isolation in������������’s prison and jails.

Casanova was one of half a dozen speakers at a press conference held on Friday to announce the introduction of a bill in the ���������� State legislature that would virtually��end the use of solitary and other forms of isolated confinement beyond 15 days. The bill, called the��, aims to��bring sweeping reform to a state where nearly 4,000 people are held in 22-to 24-hour isolation on any given day in more than 50 prisons, with at least a thousand more in solitary in local jails.

Activists from the ���������� Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC), which hosted the��press conference and��worked with��the sponsors to draft the bill,��encouraged those arriving for the mid-morning event at Greenwich Village’s Judson Memorial Church to try samples of “.” The dense, bread-like substance, made from flour, milk, yeast, grated potatoes and carrots, is served with a side of raw cabbage as an additional form of punishment for those held in solitary confinement in ����������’s prisons.

Introducing the speakers, Claire Deroche��of CAIC��and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture called the bill “the most comprehensive and progressive legislative response to date to the nationwide problem of solitary confinement in our prisons and jails.” In addition to��placing a��15-day limit on solitary, the bill would create new alternatives for those deemed a longer-term safety risk to others, replacing the punishment and deprivation of ����������’s “Special Housing Units” (SHUs) with a more rehabilitation-minded approach.

The bill is being sponsored in the Assembly by Jeffrion Aubry (D, Queens), called solitary confinement “an issue whose time has come.” Aubry, who also sponsored the 2008 SHU Exclusion Law, which limited the use of solitary on��individuals with serious mental illness, said it was time to set standards for treatment of all people in prison, regardless of their offenses. “I don’t believe that having committed a crime suspends your human rights” said Aubry. “That’s not the America I want to live in. That’s not the ���������� State I want to live in.”

The legislation’s Senate sponsor, Bill Perkins (D, Harlem) pointed out that solitary is increasingly being seen as a “moral issue” and a “crime against humanity.” The 15-day limit set by the bill conforms to recommendations made by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Méndez, but far surpasses restrictions currently placed on solitary in any American prison system. Perkins expressed his hope that the bill would find supporters in both bodies of the legislature, and that “the governor will work with us.”

������������City Council Member Daniel Dromm, who has supported measures to limit solitary confinement in city jails, described seeing a friend deteriorate after being placed in isolation on Rikers��Island. The friend,��whom Dromm described as “the gentlest person in the world,” was also “bipolar and drug addicted,” and was placed in solitary for five months for “cigarettes and talking back.” The HALT Solitary Confinement Act would ban the use of isolation altogether on vulnerable populations, including youth, the elderly, and people with mental or physical disabilities.

Five Mualimm-ak��began his statement by telling listeners: “I lived five years of my life in a space the size of your bathroom.” Mualimm-ak, who said he never committed a violent act in prison, was given stints in solitary for offenses as minor as “wasting food” by “refusing to eat an apple.” The Department of Corrections “uses the rules for the purposes of abuse,” he said.��”���������� State should be a leader” when it comes to prison conditions, said Mualimm-ak, who has been out of prison for two years and is working against what he calls “solitary torture.” Instead, New York state prisons and city jails practice isolated confinement at levels well above the national average.

Wrapping up the event, Scott Paltrowitz��of the Correctional Association of ���������� and CAIC��outlined the major��provisions of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act. In addition to banning special populations from solitary and setting a 15-day limit for all others, Paltrowitz said, the bill would eliminate the use of isolation to punish minor offenses, such as “having too many postage stamps or talking back to a guard.”

The bill��would also create secure “residential rehabilitation units (RRUs) for those who need to be separated because��they pose a genuine danger to��the��general population. RRUs��would be “aimed at providing additional programs, therapy, and support to address underlying needs and causes of behavior, with 6 hours per day of out-of-cell programming plus one hour of out-of-cell recreation.”��The legislation, said Paltrowitz, “recognizes that we need a fundamental transformation of how our public institutions address people’s needs and behaviors, both in our prisons and in our communities.”

CAIC describes itself as joining together “advocates, formerly incarcerated persons, family members of currently incarcerated people, concerned community members, lawyers, and individuals in the human rights, health, and faith communities throughout ���������� State.”��According to its website, the group��considers solitary and all forms of prison isolation to be “ineffective, counterproductive, unsafe, and inhumane,” and cites evidence showing that solitary confinement increases recidivism while failing to��reduce prison violence.

The legislation, drafted over the past year, is more ambitious and far-reaching��than bills on solitary that have been introduced in other states. As a result, it is unlikely to pass in anything resembling its current form–but supporters are determined to push forward. “The HALT Solitary Confinement Act implements rational humane alternatives to the costly, ineffective, and abusive use of long-term solitary confinement in ���������� prisons and jails,” said Sarah Kerr of the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, who helped draft the legislation. “The need for reform is well-documented and the time for change is now.”

The ���������� State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) did not respond to a request for comment on the legislation.

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