TRIBUTE: On the Devastating Loss of Activist and Friend, Mujahid Farid

November 23, 2018 by

Mujahid FaridWe at the Campaign For Alternatives to Isolated Confinement wish to express our deepest condolences to the family of Mujahid Farid. Our prayers go out to them in their time of loss.

It is such a great loss to us. Farid was a sincere, determined, and dedicated advocate for the rights and human dignity of others and never forgot those who were left behind the walls.

We salute and will forever hold dear his works and contributions to the cause of peace and justice. He has and will always be a part of the work we do and in his memory we will strive to support the legacy he established through the Release Aging People In Prison Campaign and so many other efforts over decades of struggle. “If The Risk Is Low  Let Them Go!”.

Rest In Power

New York Campaign For Alternatives to Isolated Confinement.

Farid’s wake will be held on Saturday, November 24th, 10:30AM at Benta’s Funeral Home: 630 St. Nicholas Avenue, New York, NY (corner of 141st Street) with a service to follow at 11:30AM. There will also be a memorial in the coming weeks (date and time TBD).

For those who wish to support RAPP’s ongoing work and Farid’s legacy, our RAPP colleagues are offering three options:

1. Attend our Upcoming Event: Before Farid transitioned, he and other advocates in New York and Maryland were helping put together an event that showcased the importance of releasing older people and those serving life from prison. That event is just weeks away and we hope you’ll attend. Please join us, the Justice Policy Initiative, Osborne Association, Columbia Center for Justice and others on Thursday, December 6th, 6:00PM at the Riverside Church for: Justice Long Overdue: Lessons Learned from the Successful Release of People Serving Life in Prison in Maryland and New York and Why More People Must Come Home

2. Donate to Farid’s Funeral Services: Contribute to the costs associated with Farid’s funeral and burial services. Donate through PayPal to ddgeorge23@gmail.com.

3. Donate to RAPP: Support RAPP’s ongoing work and Farid’s legacy by contributing to our Online Fall Fundraiser. Your donations will support our community organizing and advocacy work to #FreeOurElders.

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TRIBUTE: Statement on the Passing of Carole Willis, Fierce Advocate and Mother of Son in Solitary

August 6, 2018 by

New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC) would like to honor and remember one of our dear members Carole Willis, who recently passed away at the age of 79. A lifelong New Yorker, Carole was a wonderful, caring, and giving person who had a beautiful heart and soul. Carole was actively involved with CAIC and the Correctional Association of NY for the last several years, and her son Nicholas Zimmerman spent over a decade in solitary confinement.

Carole was a fierce advocate and committed campaign member. She participated in numerous meetings with legislators, multiple advocacy days in Albany, and various community events, including speaking on behalf of CAIC. Carole’s wholehearted dedication was truly inspiring. From making visits to such far away prisons as Attica and Clinton, often trekking from her home in Queens to Harlem and elsewhere for campaign meetings, to waking up before dawn to catch the buses going to Albany, Carole was amazing in her commitment and her strength. Even this year, Carole woke up at three in the morning in order to be on the buses to come up for our advocacy day for the HALT Solitary Confinement Act.

Apart from her efforts with CAIC and the CA, Carole was a missionary, family matriarch, a decades-long member of multiple helping professions, a lifelong learner, and much more. We are deeply grateful for having known Carole and for all of her efforts in support of the #HALTsolitary campaign. We will deeply miss her and her beautiful spirit, and we are sending much love to her family.

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NEWS: #HALTsolitary Confinement Act PASSED in the NY State Assembly

July 5, 2018 by

On Tuesday, June 12, by a vote of 99 – 45, the New York State Assembly passed the Humane Alternatives to Long Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act (A.3080B-Aubry / S.4784A-Parker). The announcement from the Speaker that the bill had passed was greeted with cheers and applause from CAIC members in attendance in the Assembly gallery.

In comments made from the Assembly floor preceding the vote, lead sponsor Jeffrion Aubry of District 35 in Queens made it clear why the reforms in the bill are so urgently needed: “Solitary confinement has been identified by the United Nations as torture under the Mandela Rules. Inmates in SHUs are locked into their cells 23 hours a day with one hour of recreation time in an outdoor cage. They get no phone calls, no personal property, no programming, no religious services and there are no legal limits to how long they can be kept. Some prisoners have been in SHU for decades.”

“What we are doing with the bill,” Aubry explained to his fellow Assemblymembers, “is saying to the state, saying to our population, saying to the people who are incarcerated that we have heard you. Many of them have been to see you in your offices who have suffered from this. They have asked for relief for those who they have left behind. It is but right and good that we enact this bill.”

The #HALTsolitary campaign, which has long engaged in organizing, education, and advocacy to get the bill enacted into law, issued the following statement:

“The #HALTsolitary campaign applauds Speaker Carl Heastie, lead Assembly sponsor Jeffrion Aubry, and the New York State Assembly for passing legislation to end the torture of solitary confinement and replace it with more humane and effective alternatives. Thousands of people remain in solitary confinement in New York’s prisons and jails each day, isolated 22 to 24 hours a day in a cell without any meaningful human contact or programs, often for months, years, and even decades. They are disproportionately Black and Latinx people, young people, gender non-conforming people, and people with mental illness, often held in isolation for non-violent infractions or even for speaking out about abuse by staff. If the State Senate fails to act to end this racist and destructive practice this session, as appears likely even though HALT has 25 co-sponsors in that house, Governor Cuomo must implement the reforms we seek administratively.”

Referring to the fact that Governor Cuomo could at any time write most of the measures in the HALT Bill into law through executive action, Aubry exhorted his colleagues to take a definitive stand: “The executive [branch] could have ended this immediately. They could have looked at the history of SHUs [Special Housing Unit, aka solitary confinement] and immediately taken the action to stop the process. Looked at what’s going on in the world and stopped the process. But they haven’t. Not just this administration, but administrations in the past. Sometimes we as legislators have to step up to the plate and say what is right is right.”

Despite strong support for HALT in the State Senate, the bill was not brought to the floor for a vote before the end of session in late June.

Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo and NYS Commissioner of Corrections Anthony Annucci have both ignored multiple invitations from CAIC to spend 24 hours in a solitary confinement cell, as the Corrections Commissioner of Colorado did before implementing major reforms.

#HALTsolitary Confinement Act Passes in the NY State Assembly – SEE THE FULL 9-MINUTE VIDEO:

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NEWS: NYCAIC Thanks Speaker Heastie and NY State Assembly for Including #HALTsolitary Act in New Criminal Justice Reform Legislation

February 26, 2018 by

The #HALTsolitary campaign of NYCAIC released the following statement on February 12, 2018, following the Assembly majority’s introduction of a comprehensive criminal justice reform package that includes the HALT Solitary Confinement Act:

The New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC) applauds Speaker Carl E. Heastie and the New York Assembly for including the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act, A.3080B/S.4784A, as part of its Criminal Justice Reform package announced today.

Solitary confinement is torture. Thousands of people, disproportionately Black and Brown people, remain in solitary in New York each day: 22 to 24 hours a day in a cell without any meaningful human contact or programs. People continue to spend months, years, and decades in solitary (30+ years) in New York. These conditions cause devastating physical, mental, and behavioral impacts. The entire United Nations, including the United States, passed rules prohibiting solitary beyond 15 days for any person, because it otherwise would amount to torture. Colorado has implemented a 15-day limit in its prisons and reduced the number of people in solitary from 1,500 to 18.  The HALT Solitary Confinement Act would similarly include a 15-day limit on solitary, and would create more humane and effective alternatives. While Governor Cuomo has touted reforms to solitary, New York still has a higher percentage of people in solitary (5.8%) than the national average (4.4%) and much higher than states that have reformed solitary (less than 1% to 2%).

The HALT Solitary Confinement Act, A.3080B/S.4784A, is the only bill that will end the torture of solitary for all people and create more humane and effective alternatives. Over 180 organizations across New York State and over 100 New York legislators now support the HALT Act. Without HALT, thousands of New Yorkers will continue to be subjected to the torture of solitary.

We are thus grateful that Speaker Heastie and the New York Assembly have prioritized the HALT Act, and look forward to the Assembly passing HALT, and for the New York State Senate and Governor Andrew Cuomo to follow the Assembly’s lead. We also applaud Speaker Heastie and the Assembly for pushing for other urgent and necessary changes to the criminal justice system, including bills related to bail, speedy trial, discovery, reentry, and more. We look forward to partnering with the Assembly to make these and other priorities, such as parole reform, the law in New York State.

It is finally time for New York to end the torture of solitary confinement, and undertake a fundamental transformation of the state’s criminal justice system as a whole, and we once again applaud the Speaker’s and the Assembly’s leadership toward those ends.

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EVENTS: Photos Requested by People in Solitary Confinement on Exhibit

February 1, 2018 by

Jack Davis, Photo Requests from Solitaryby David M. Schwartz. Excerpted from Newsday.

On Sunday, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock in Manhasset displayed two dozen photos sent to those in solitary confinement through the program, Photo Requests from Solitary.

The exhibit, part of a campaign to change how New York handles solitary confinement, shows the imagination and memories of those locked in solitary confinement for weeks at a time, prison reform advocates said.

“I would like to have a painting of the outdoors, maybe a wooded scene, with maybe a doe and twin fawns,” wrote Hershel on July 20, 2013.

“You can look at that and see someone is more than their worst act,” said Jean Casella, co-director of Solitary Watch, a web-based watchdog group aimed at raising public awareness about the widespread use of solitary confinement. “It’s a reminder that even though they’re surrounded by gray walls, they have a complete inner life going on.”

The exhibit will be open through Feb. 13. Opening times vary; for details call (516) 472-2977 or email cderoche@uucsr.org.

Read the full article at Newsday.

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NEWS: CAIC to Cuomo: Spend 24 Hours in Solitary Confinement

January 5, 2018 by

HALT Solitary Confinement Act, CAIC Protest at Governor Cuomo Officeby Victoria Law. Excerpted from The Nation.

After being accused of cursing at a corrections officer, Jessica Concepcion, seven months pregnant, spent the Christmas of 2006 in solitary confinement at Bedford Hills, New York’s maximum-security prison for women. Confined to her a cell for 23 consecutive hours, she had no opportunity for any human interaction, let alone a chance to wish her family a merry Christmas. “It was torture,” she told me. “All you have is those walls to talk to. You don’t have nothing else but those walls.”

On Friday, December 22, Concepcion and her wife Xena Grandichelli, who has also spent time in solitary, joined over a dozen advocates outside Governor Andrew Cuomo’s midtown office to sing Christmas carols. But they weren’t simply spreading holiday cheer; they were urging him to pass the Humane Alternatives to Long Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act, which would limit time in isolation to 15 consecutive days and create alternatives for those who need longer periods of separation.

The protesters held aloft a 24-by-36 inch holiday card that invited the governor to spend 24 hours in solitary. The invitation may seem outrageous, but it’s not unprecedented.

Read the full article at The Nation.

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NEWS: Report on Solitary Confinement at NY’s Southport Prison Exposes “Torturous Environment”

December 17, 2017 by

by Victoria Law. Excerpted from Solitary Watch.

Southport Correctional Facility, New YorkImagine row after row of cell doors that rarely open and row after row of people trapped behind those doors, in small cells, day after day. Imagine having to hold most of your conversations by shouting through your cell door at voices whose faces you cannot see; imagine trying to sleep as a cacophony of other voices continue shouting around you.

This is the reality inside Southport Correctional Facility, New York’s first supermax prison. Located four hours west of New York City near the Pennsylvania border, Southport holds roughly 350 people in Special Housing Units (SHUs), or specially-designed solitary confinement units, on any given day. These 350 people spend at least 23 hours each day alone in their cells with little to no human interaction or programming to engage their minds.

On Wednesday, the Correctional Association of New York, the state’s oldest prison monitoring organization, released a report entitled Solitary at Southport. Drawing on the organization’s 2015 inspection of the prison, one-on-one interviews with nearly every person held in the SHU, follow-up investigations, and responses from over 190 written surveys and correspondence, Solitary at Southport reveals a prison that “embodies some of the very worst aspects of incarceration in New York.”

Read the full article at Solitary Watch.

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VOICES: CAIC Members Give Powerful Testimony About Solitary in New Video Series

November 14, 2017 by

tyrrell muhammed, we are witnesses, the marshall project“We Are Witnesses” is a new series of short videos produced by The Marshall Project and The New Yorker, offering incredibly powerful testimony from 20 people whose lives have become enmeshed in the U.S. criminal system.

Two of the videos feature CAIC members. One is about Alicia Barraza and Doug Van Zandt, whose son Ben committed suicide in solitary. One is about Tyrrell Muhammad, who was in prison for 26 years and 11 months, including 7 years in solitary.

“You don’t even know when you lose your mind.” Tyrrell Muhammad describes the experience of solitary confinement: “Usually when we have a snowstorm, after 3 days we get cabin fever, everybody wants to get out. Solitary confinement? There’s no getting out.” He talks about how solitary caused him to start to lose his hold on reality, seeing “figurines” in the paint patterns on the wall of his cell that “look like Abraham Lincoln.”

“Then you’re saying to yourself, ‘That’s not Abraham Lincoln. Stop it. Cut it out,’” he says. “You’re battling yourself for your sanity. And it’s a hell of a battle.”

alicia barraza, We Are Witnesses, The Marshall Project“He wasn’t a bad kid. He was just a kid that was mentally ill.” Alicia Barraza and Doug Van Zandt talk about their son Ben, who despite being 17 years old and diagnosed with a mental illness, was not granted youthful offender status by the DA.

“I wanted to help him, and protect him, but then at the same time, he was already in this criminal system,” Alicia says. “He left us a note. He just said, ‘Please tell my family I love them.’”

Please watch and share!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/witnesses?share=tyrrell

https://www.themarshallproject.org/witnesses?share=alicia-doug

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NEWS: Coalition of State Lawmakers Urges New York to End Solitary Confinement

November 10, 2017 by

On November 9, more than 40 New York State legislators signed a strongly worded letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo and Corrections Commissioner Anthony Annucci to end the use of extended solitary confinement in the state’s prisons and local jails. “[W]e respectfully urge you to end the torture of long-term segregated confinement and replace it with more humane and effective alternatives,” the lawmakers write.

The letter cites a devastating report published in September by Disability Rights New York, which found rampant neglect and abuse, including extreme and prolonged isolation, of individuals with mental illness at Attica Correctional Facility.

The letter refers to the “severe and lasting psychological, physical and social damage” caused by solitary, and to “the systemic way in which solitary confinement is disproportionately inflicted on Black people in our state prisons.” It concludes that “Our prisons are in crisis and our constituents and communities—to which the vast majority of incarcerated people eventually return—are suffering as a result.”

The legislators who signed the letter are all co-sponsors of the Humane Alternative to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act, and cite the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement as its “grassroots partner” in working toward passage of the bill.

Until that happens, the lawmakers urge Cuomo and Annucci to voluntarily implement the HALT Act’s main provisions in the state prison system. “These provisions include prohibiting solitary confinement for especially vulnerable populations such as young people, the elderly, and people with mental illness and developmental disabilities; limiting solitary confinement to 15 consecutive days, or 20 days in any 60 day period, for all people; and ensuring that temporary separation in the interest of safety does not mean isolation by providing access to rehabilitative programs and meaningful human interaction.”

To read the full letter, click here.

You can also read the AP Story in the NY Daily News.

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EVENTS: What People Locked Up For 23 Hours A Day Yearn To See

September 15, 2017 by

By Victoria Law. Excerpted from Gothamist. 

No one knows exactly how many people are held in solitary confinement throughout New York State. There’s the SHU, or Special Housing Unit, a special unit dedicated to locking people away from other. Then there’s keeplock, where people are confined to the cells in their housing units. There’s also protective custody, where people fearing or at risk for violence, are confined. In each of these, people are held in their cells for at least 23 hours each day. Often, their only human contact is with the guard that brings them their food or handcuffs them before bringing them to the shower three times each week. Some have spent years, and sometimes decades, in isolation.

While Rikers Island records the numbers of those who are isolated isolated, no data is compiled from jails throughout the state. As of September 1, 2017, state prisons held 2,886 people in SHUs. Approximately 1,000 people are held in keeplock, where people are confined to the cells in their housing units.

A group called Photo Requests from Solitary asks these people held in isolation what they would like to see. Volunteer artists then take on these requests, sometimes creating original images, sometimes digging through their existing works to find one that fits…

Some of the works provided to prisoners through Photo Requests from Solitary are currently on display at Photoville in DUMBO. On Wednesday night, Johnny Perez and other volunteers from the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement greeted visitors examining the pictures.

For Perez, the issue of solitary confinement is personal. During his 13 years in prison, he spent an accumulated three years in solitary confinement, often in cells less than half the size of the 20′ x 8′ foot container. In one prison, the six-foot-tall Perez could touch the cell walls on either side whenever he stretched his arms. “That’s how big some of the cells are,” he said.

Perez was released before Photo Requests from Solitary reached New York’s prisons. But he knows the value of an image. Being in prison, he explained, means “never crossing the street for 13 years. Not seeing trees or grass. Solitary is a space so deprived of sensory stimulation. It’s easy to get psychologically boxed in.”…

Read the full article — and view the photos — at Gothamist.

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