NYAPRS Note: After many years of tireless efforts by heroic HALT bill sponsor Jeffrion Aubry and the extraordinary Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC), the NYS Assembly has passed the “Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement” HALT bill. NYAPRS staff and our Cultural Competence and Public Policy Committees have been committed members of CAIC and will host a webinar this Friday, March 19, entitled “The Connection Between Race and Solitary Confinement in NYS Prisons” at 12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada) that will feature CAIC members Jerome Wright, Natasha White and Scott Paltrowitz. Register how at https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0pEMATipQiSix_9aa3IAUg.
I sent the following to my CAIC colleagues just now: “I bow to each one of you with the most humble respect and gratitude. There is no cause we’ve supported over the of over the last 3 decades whose passage has been more imperative than HALT…no issue of such horror and inhumanity…and no campaign and coalition I’ve seen and been a part of than all of you. You and the inspired members of the Assembly who passed the bill have made history today and I will never forget how committed, courageous, inspiring, unrelenting and graced each of you are, both now and always. Not only are we stopping the suffering and saving the lives of what would have been thousands of New Yorkers but HALT’s passage will be a force for change across our country that will bring compassion, support, rehabilitation and freedom to tens of thousands of Americans in the coming years that they would otherwise never have received, were it not for you.”
Legislature Moves Bill To Limit The Use Of Solitary Confinement
By Bill Mahoney Politico March 16, 2021
ALBANY — The Assembly was poised to pass a bill to limit the use of solitary confinement on Tuesday evening.
That chamber had passed the legislation in 2018. But in a first, the Senate moved it out of committee on Tuesday. And Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins announced that her house plans to pass the measure by the end of the week.
The expected passage is a major victory for criminal justice reformers, who’ve been pushing for changes to solitary for years. The issue gained particular attention following the death of Kalief Browder, who committed suicide after being placed in isolation on Rikers for two years while facing allegations that he stole a backpack. With measures like bail reform having been acted on recently, solitary confinement has been one of the top items on reformers’ to-do lists.
The bill: The legislation would limit the use of solitary to inmates accused of the most dangerous violations, and for no more than 15 days. If an inmate needs to be isolated for longer, they’d be placed in a special rehabilitation unit that provides them with six hours of out-of-cell programming as well as an hour of recreation time each day.
When the bill failed to pass in 2019, legislative leaders reached an agreement with Gov. Andrew Cuomo to impose some reforms to the use of solitary, such as prohibiting its use on inmates who are teenagers or pregnant. But the changes were not immediately implemented.
Cuomo’s public comments on the legislation have been focused on saying that the new rehabilitation units would cost too much. Supporters dispute that, saying it would actually save the state money.
And they’re hopeful that the Legislature’s movement on a progressive priority will box him in when it arrives on his desk.
“The governor has used this terrible compromise in which [the state] made some regulation changes, and that was it,” said the Center for Community Alternatives’ Katie Schaffer. ”The campaign has been demanding that the Legislature move forward on the bill and hold the governor’s feet to the fire, and I think the Legislature is doing that.”
The Assembly debate: Debate on the bill passed the four-hour mark at around 7 p.m., and was proceeding along party lines.
It was led by Speaker Pro Tempore Jeff Aubry, in a rare instance in which he left the dais where he usually presides over the chamber.
By passing the bill, he said, the Legislature was asserting that “a certain level of treatment of individuals, regardless of who they are or why they may have been incarcerated, is something that doesn’t meet our standards. And in this case, even the international standard … Solitary confinement has been established by the United Nations to consider it torture.”
Aubry noted that “while we don’t eliminate this practice, we regulate it in a way which we think is conducive to the long-term betterment of both those who are incarcerated as well as the communities they return to.”
Republicans argued that some individuals “don’t really want to rehabilitate, they just want to continue to cause problems,” and that by letting these individuals mingle with broader prison populations, both guards and other inmates will be placed at risk.
Anna Gronewold contributed to this report.
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NY Lawmakers Set to Pass ‘HALT’ Bill to Limit Use of Solitary Confinement
by Dan Clark New York Now March 16, 2021
Solitary confinement in New York’s prisons would be severely limited under legislation set to pass this week in Albany, where a majority of Democrats who control the state Legislature support the measure.
The bill, called the Humane Alternatives to Solitary Confinement Act, was approved by the Assembly Tuesday and is scheduled to pass in the Senate on Thursday.
“On Thursday, we will be passing HALT,” said Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Westchester. “I know so many people have been really hoping we do, and we’re happy that we’re going to be able to do that.”
Under the legislation, incarcerated individuals would not be allowed to spend more than 15 days in solitary confinement. There’s currently no limit on how long someone can spend in solitary, with some incarcerated people reporting months-long stints in isolation.
Those who spend time in solitary confinement would then be transferred to what the legislation refers to as a residential rehabilitation unit.
Those units would be used to provide therapy, treatment, and other rehabilitative programming for individuals who’ve spent time in solitary confinement. That would help those individuals resolve issues that might have landed them in solitary, supporters have said.
The legislation would also, among other things, ban the use of solitary confinement for pregnant individuals, those living with certain disabilities, and anyone under the age of 22, and older than 54.
And people who’ve been determined to suffer from a serious mental illness would also be ineligible for solitary confinement under the legislation. They would, instead, be sent to a residential rehabilitation unit for further evaluation.
Democrats have had the votes to pass the HALT bill for the last two years, but received significant pushback on the measure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
It was set to pass two years ago, but Cuomo had threatened to veto the measure over its projected cost. His office had placed a $350 million price tag on the legislation at the time — a number that lawmakers have disputed.
The Partnership for Public Good, a think-tank in Buffalo, has since released a report that claims the HALT bill would actually save the state money, not cost it.
But rather than risk the veto, Democrats decided to pull the bill at the time and allow Cuomo to, instead, make a series of administrative changes through the regulatory powers of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. Those regulations, announced nearly two years ago, were never finalized. Though, spokespeople for DOCCS have said that some of the regulatory changes had already been implemented, or were in the works.
Now, a new slate of Democrats elected in last year’s elections have agreed to approve the HALT bill, regardless of whether Cuomo intends to sign or veto it.
And they have the numbers to do it. Assuming each Democrat in the State Senate agrees to vote for the bill, they now have a veto-proof supermajority in the chamber to override a decision from Cuomo to block the measure. The Assembly already had such a majority.
Cuomo has not commented publicly on the bill in more than a year, and spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its expected passage this week.
The legislation is also opposed by NYSCOPBA, the union that represents correction officers at the state’s prisons. They’ve argued that solitary confinement in New York isn’t what it’s made out to be, and that the sanction is used to protect other individuals, not just to punish some.
Mike Powers, president of NYSCOPBA, said last year that the legislation could make prisons less safe, both for staff and other incarcerated individuals, particularly as reports of violence continue to increase in those facilities. “When I go back to the society analogy, bad actors that disrupt society in the streets are removed from society to maintain the safety and security,” Powers said. “It’s the same premise in a correctional facility.” Powers has also said that, in many instances, people placed in solitary confinement already receive a specialized level of attention and services than those in the general population, with a goal toward rehabilitation.
Supporters of the bill have argued that prison staff would still be able to isolate certain individuals from others, and that the sanction is currently used to punish people for both violent and non-violent acts.
In a letter to Democrats who lead the state Legislature, a coalition of more than 200 groups urged them to approve the measure this week, arguing that the practice doesn’t benefit incarcerated individuals.
“Rather than addressing the root causes of any problematic behaviors, solitary confinement breeds trauma, despair, and serious mental illness,” the groups wrote.
If approved by Cuomo, the HALT bill would take effect a year after he signs it.