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���������� Note: The campaign to win solitary confinement reforms that include a ban for special populations returned to Albany yesterday via a spirited demonstration at the NYS Capital. We are once again seeking passage of the Humane Alternatives to Long-term (HALT) Solitary Confinement bill, a measure that had sufficient votes in both houses to pass last year but was off tracked by Governor Cuomo on the last day of last year’s session.
���������� is a very active member of the campaign and is helping to support the upcoming January 21 HALT Lobby Day in Albany. The program will run from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, will include a march, news conference and demonstration; T shirts can be secured at and lunch vouchers may be available. More next week!

���������� Advocates Urge Solitary Confinement Changes
By Ryan Tarinelli Associated Press January 10, 2020

ALBANY — ���������� advocates are pushing a bill this session that would ban placement of a prisoner in solitary confinement for more than 15 consecutive days.

Legislation supporters chanted at the State Capitol on Thursday and urged lawmakers to pass the proposal, which did not cross the finish line at the end of last year’s session.

In June, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced a separate plan to restrict the use of solitary confinement through administrative channels. But, the legislation supported by advocates would go further to curb solitary confinement.

“(It’s) long way past time that they reformed solitary confinement,” said Victor Pate, a formerly incarcerated person who spent time in solitary confinement and is urging lawmakers to pass the legislation.

Advocates, who panned solitary confinement as torture, highlighted cases where prisoners killed themselves in isolation or after being exposed to it.

They say the bill would apply to both state prisons and county jails.

Experts have long expressed concerns that solitary confinement is not suitable for people who are mentally ill or trying to hurt themselves.

State Sen. Luis Sepulveda, a Democrat from ���������� City who is sponsoring the bill, said he has found no evidence that solitary confinement changes behavior or improves the well-being of inmates or correction officers.

The state, he said, must devote more resources to treatment and services that improve behavior.

Another bill supporter, state Sen. Brad Hoylman, said lawmakers were close to passing the legislation last session and argued that ����������’s use of solitary confinement needs to be fixed.

“We’re faced with a system where we have mindless approaches to incarceration that punish people for no reason whatsoever,” said the Manhattan Democrat.

The correctional officers’ union opposed restrictions on solitary confinement last year. The union’s president has said those housing units separate “dangerous” people from the inmate general population.

Meanwhile, a state watchdog agency has repeatedly found that the prisons it inspects aren’t abiding by current solitary confinement rules.

Eight of the 25 prisons visited by the Justice Center in 2018  existing solitary confinement regulations due to mental health and suicide assessments, along with follow-up visits, not being completed in certain time frames.

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Advocates Push for Reforms to Solitary Confinement
By   WBFO  January 8, 2020

Criminal justice reform continues to be a hot-button topic in the state. On the heels of state reforms regarding bail and discovery laws, advocates are urging lawmakers to fundamentally change the way solitary confinement is conducted in jails and prisons.

For over seven years Jerome Wright sat in a 6 by 9 foot cell, cut off from the rest of the world, even cut off from the prison he was housed in.

“It’s like taking somebody and locking them up,” he said. “And then putting them in the bathroom and saying on top of you being restricted from going anywhere else, you have to stay in this bathroom.”

As part of a panel discussion on solitary confinement at the Crucial Community Center Tuesday, Wright says his experience has led him to become an organizer for the WNY Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement.

Wright maintains the system for putting and keeping people in solitary is arbitrary and the physical and mental suffering leaves prisoners worse off than when they were first confined.

He believes the Humane Alternatives to Long Term (H.A.L.T.) Solitary Confinement Act, which currently sits in limbo in the State Legislature, will go a long way to improve a practice long thought of as torturous and antiquated by its detractors.
“One of the main tenants of HALT is not just getting people less time and getting them programs,” he said. “But also holding people accountable who put you in there, and monitoring what is going on so that people are getting the type of therapy, the type of education, the type of services they need.”

Later this month, Wright’s organization, along with other criminal justice groups from across the state, is marching on Albany to demand the enactment of the H.A.L.T. Act.