Alliance Note: The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) continues to disregard and breach the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act by placing people with major mental health challenges and other disabilities in solitary confinement. We and other advocates are hopeful the recent lawsuit filed against the state by the Legal Aid Society and Disability Rights Advocates will stop prison staff from continuing to subject people with disabilities to torture through harmful confinement.
The state’s prison workers union has alleged the passage of HALT has led to increases in violence within correctional facilities and claim this is the reason HALT provisions must be repealed. Yet, other states which have restricted the use of solitary confinement have seen the opposite effect. After Colorado implemented a solitary confinement ban, restricting the number of days individuals can spend in solitary to 15 days. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this policy helped accelerate reductions in the number of people in solitary from thousands to a few hundred. Notably, corrections officers in Colorado quickly began to see positive results with better interactions between people who are incarcerated and the officers.
NYS DOCCS staff’s resistance to the HALT law exemplifies the needed cultural shift in these settings in New York. We must move from a culture of overly punitive measures to one which prioritizes rehabilitation and support so people who are incarcerated do not leave these settings worse than when they entered. This is critical to supporting public safety and ensuring people who are released do not cycle back into jails and prisons. The Alliance will continue to work with the HALTSolitary Coalition to monitor the implementation of HALT and push DOCCS to adequately support people with disabilities in prisons. See below for more information.
Lawsuit Accuses Prisons of Putting Disabled Inmates in Solitary Units
By Brendan J. Lyons | Times Union | May 13, 2024
ALBANY — Two advocacy organizations have filed a class-action lawsuit accusing New York of violating a law that went into effect two years ago that prohibits prisons and jails from placing inmates with disabilities in solitary confinement.
The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, or “HALT” Act, reduced the permissible uses of solitary confinement amid concerns that inmates, especially those with disabilities, “are particularly vulnerable to the disastrous and frequently irreversible medical and psychological consequences wrought by solitary confinement, and the growing penological consensus that solitary makes prisons less safe,” according to a statement by the Legal Aid Society and Disability Rights Advocates, which filed the lawsuit with the firm Winston & Strawn LLP.
The lawsuit was filed as the union representing state prison officers said there was a significant increase in assaults in the first year the law took effect, and that there has been a 35 percent surge in inmate assaults in the second year HALT was in effect.
The New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association were rebuffed last year when they urged state lawmakers to amend the HALT Act that they said severely limits, and in some instances eliminates, the reasons that inmates may be placed in special housing units and separated from the general population of prisons and jails.
“It’s unfathomable that the New York state Legislature continues to ignore or acknowledge what is clear to those of us who work in prisons and county jails,” said Chris Summers, president of the prison officers union. “The statistics clearly indicate that since April of 2022, violence in our prisons has increased to levels that are unsustainable as staffing shortages and mandatory overtime have pushed staff to their limits.”
But the use of solitary confinement is still allowed in some instances and the lawsuit alleges the use of residential rehabilitation units, which were supposed to replace the use of solitary with therapeutic programming, have been transformed into “de facto” solitary confinement because inmates are being held in those cells for extended periods.
One of the three petitioners in the class-action lawsuit is a blind inmate who they said was confined to his cell at Mid-State Correctional Facility for up to 20 hours on Mondays through Thursdays, and up to 23 hours on Fridays, weekends and most holidays. When he was transferred to Upstate Correctional Facility a year ago, he has been held in solitary confinement in a rehabilitation unit, according to the lawsuit.
The HALT Act defines solitary confinement as holding an inmate in a cell for more than 17 hours a day. The lawsuit alleges the state corrections department and Office of Mental Health have policies that allow prison officials to use solitary confinement for people with disabilities that include “post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, speech disabilities, mobility disabilities requiring the use of walkers or canes, and people who are hard of hearing or have low vision.”
Another petitioner is a 39-year-old man who has been in prison since 2019 and held in solitary confinement and Auburn and Clinton correctional facilities despite his hearing and mental health disabilities. The isolation has exacerbated his depression and anxiety, leading to feelings of “hopelessness, frustration, and hypervigilance,” according to the claim.
“HALT was intended to prevent the deep damage that people with disabilities often suffer when they are subjected to solitary confinement,” said Stefen R. Short, an attorney with the Prisoners’ Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society. “DOCCS and OMH have unlawfully refused to recognize a number of disabilities as exempt under HALT, leading to even more incarcerated New Yorkers languishing in solitary confinement to their own detriment.”
The prison officers union has said that without the ability to use solitary confinement to house inmates who engage in violence the conditions are growing more dangerous in the facilities. They said data collected by the state corrections department found that there were 4,227 assaults on staff members and inmates during the second year HALT was in effect — a 35 percent increase.
The first year HALT was in place the number of assaults increased 33 percent, the union said.
“The numbers do not lie,” Summers said. “Conditions in prison have never been worse and for supporters of HALT to sit idly by and ignore that this ridiculous legislation is contributing to the historic levels of violence is doing a disservice to the brave and hard working men and women of NYSCOPBA.”
He called it “reprehensible that the legislators who voted for HALT continue to turn a blind eye to the violence. It not only puts staff in danger, but the inmates they advocate for.”
The lawsuit also asserts that the state Office of Mental Health is improperly designating those who are “seriously mentally ill” using an “outdated” exclusion law that enables many individuals with various mental health problems to be held in solitary confinement.
The mental health policy “violates HALT by failing to apply its protections to all people with mental health disabilities,” the lawsuit states.
In a statement, a spokesman for the Office of Mental Health claimed the agency cannot comment on pending litigation. The office instead provided information highlighting the addition of 200 beds to state mental health facilities in the recently passed state budget, as well as $33 million “that will bolster our ability to provide support and services for individuals involved in the criminal justice system who have a mental health history or a lack of engagement in treatment.”
The Times Union reported last year that violations of the new solitary confinement standards were occurring as the state had apparently struggled to implement the policy changes.
A report by the Correctional Association of New York, an independent organization authorized to monitor prison conditions and report its findings publicly, found there were “numerous departures from basic adherence” to the HALT Act.
The association’s report described HALT as “a sea change in the philosophical underpinnings of behavior management in prisons,” but noted its implementation had met fierce resistance from some state prison staffers who linked new desegregation policies to an increase in violence.
The report noted there were also prison workers who had embraced the changes while acknowledging the prison system had relied too heavily in the past on solitary confinement.
Still, the report, which examined the implementation of the law during a nine-month period in 2022 — the first year it went into effect — found that some inmates were being held in isolation in special housing units for “six times the legal limit,” and that individuals whose backgrounds prohibit them from being placed in segregation were still being held there.
The restricted population includes those aged 21 or younger and 55 or older, or who suffer from mental, medical or physical disabilities.
The report also found, as is alleged in the class-action lawsuit, that individuals were being held in “residential rehabilitative units” without receiving programming assistance.
Inmates also were being held in special housing units and residential rehabilitative units for reasons not allowed under the law, including being held in “pre-hearing confinement” for alleged infractions without access to meaningful representation, according to the correctional association.
The association’s report recommended, among myriad other improvements, that the corrections department “publicly articulate explanations for (its) lack of adherence to or full implementation of each of HALT’s requirements and outline steps that can be taken now to follow the law’s requirements.”
In response to the association’s report, the corrections department provided a written response noting it had made “significant strides” in reducing the use of segregated confinement dating to 2014, and that it was given a one-year window after former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the law to implement the changes reducing the maximum number of days an inmate could be held in a special-housing unit to 15 days.
“In the first 30 days of HALT being effective, DOCCS witnessed a considerable rise in violence in general population and more specifically, within the (residential rehabilitative units), both in the housing area and in the classroom setting, targeting both staff and the incarcerated population,” the agency said in its response last year. “The increase in violence in both general population and (residential rehabilitative units) resulted in DOCCS not having enough… capacity to transfer incarcerated individuals who received a disciplinary confinement sanction in excess of 15 days after they served 15 days in segregated confinement.”
The agency also increased the “out of cell” time for inmates held in segregated units for more than 15 days to seven hours per day, which resulted in their classification not being listed as “segregated confinement.” To address the shortage of residential rehabilitative units, the department built more of those units across the state to address the uptick in violence officials contend has been requiring more inmates to be housed in the special units.
“While the report points out that DOCCS has seen an increase in violence over the past several years, the report fails to recognize that the historical increases were marginal, whereas the increases experienced since the passage of HALT were significant,” the department said in its response.
The use of solitary confinement dates back centuries and has been known for its devastating physical and mental health effects.
Lawsuit accuses NY prisons of putting disabled inmates in solitary (timesunion.com)