Legislation

KEY COMPONENTS OF THE PENDING RIGHTS BEHIND BARS ACT IN NEW YORK STATE

1. The state prisons have explicitly banned family and care packages, depriving people of their only source of nutritional food and imposing heavy burdens on families. The package ban bans families from sending any food, bans people from bringing any packages to visits, only allows packages to be sent by mail two times a year and those packages can not contain food and must be sent from external vendors.
   • Rights Behind Bars would rescind the package ban to ensure that people can send or bring packages, including with food, to their loved ones.
2. Prisons, jails, and forensic facilities vastly restrict people’s ability to visit with their loved ones. The state prisons have recently adopted a new policy that allows a person to have their visits taken away for any minor rule violation. In addition, facilities provide so-called “contact visits” where people are in a caged area with only the ability to slide their hand through a slot.
   • Rights Behind Bars would ensure that all people are able to have visits with their loved ones, and ensure that those visits are actually contact visits where people can be in the same shared space with their loved ones.
3. Prisons and jails are flagrantly and systematically violating the HALT Solitary Confinement Law to continue to torture people.
   • Rights Behind Bars addresses these violations, including by making even clearer what the law already requires. For example, DOCCS is locking people on the OMH caseload in direct violation of the plain language of HALT, so Rights Behind Bars makes abundantly clear with examples that people on the caseload can’t be in solitary. Similarly, DOCCS is locking people alone in a rec pen for “congregate out-of-cell time”, so Rights Behind Bars makes clear what is already true that out-of-cell time must take place in a group setting in a shared space.
4. Prison staff also continue to brutalize incarcerated people with impunity. A recent New York Times investigation started with “Shattered teeth. Punctured lungs. Broken bones” and went on to document myriad cases of rampant staff brutality against people incarcerated, along with falsified records and cover-ups.
   • Rights Behind Bars creates heightened standards to prevent brutality, retaliation, falsified records, and cover-ups.

SUMMARY OF LOCAL LAW 42 ENACTED IN NYC IN 2024

1. The core of Local Law 42 is ending solitary confinement, in all forms by all names, beyond a maximum of four hours for emergency de-escalation, while instead allowing alternative forms of separation proven to better support people’s health and safety for everyone. 
2. To be clear, under Local Law 42 if someone engages in violence, they can immediately be locked in a cell on an emergency basis for purposes of de-escalation in order to address the immediate situation, for up to four hours. After that immediate period, people can still be separated from the general facility population in alternative units. Local Law 42 would change the nature of that separation. Rather than isolation that is known to cause harm and increase the likelihood of violence, people who are separated would be placed in environments, like CAPS, Merle Cooper, and RSVP above, that are better suited for actually reducing and preventing violence and keeping people more healthy.
3. To ensure that the ban on solitary confinement is real and to prevent the Department of Correction from imposing solitary confinement by a different name as it has repeatedly done, the law provides very clear definitions of various terms, including “cell”, “out of cell”, and “restrictive housing.” Although one might not think it necessary to define “cell” or “out of cell”, given that the Department has in the past considered being locked alone in an extended cell as “out of cell” these definitions are imperative to ensure that people have access to actually being outside of a cell, in a shared space with other people.
4. Also to ensure that alternative units do not replicate the harms of solitary by another name and instead follow proven programs like CAPS and RSVP, the law requires that the forty-year-old basic minimum standard for out-of-cell time in NYC jails – namely access to 14 hours of daily out-of-cell time with people only involuntarily locked in for 8 hours at night for sleep and 2 hours during the day for count – applies to all people in the jails apart from de-escalation confinement, including people in alternative units. The law also requires people to have access to seven hours of daily out of cell group programming or activities, and limits the use of restraints to prevent people from automatically being chained to desks during out-of-cell time.
5. The law also enhances fairness, transparency and accountability by enhancing due process protections, including access to representation, time limits on placement in restrictive housing, and public reporting on the use of solitary and alternatives.

SUMMARY OF THE PENDING FEDERAL END SOLITARY CONFINEMENT ACT, S3409/HR4972: This Act will:

1. End All Forms Of Solitary Confinement Beyond Four Hours: In line with best practices in youth and mental health settings, the Act will place a firm time limit on the use of solitary confinement of a maximum of four hours to de-escalate emergency situations involving imminent serious physical injury.
2. Allow Other Forms of Separation Scientifically Proven to Better Support Health and Reduce Violence: The bill still allows people to be separated from the general facility population – they just can’t be isolated and tortured. To implement the types of proven alternatives, the Act will ensure that all people in federal custody, including in any form of separation/alternatives to solitary, regardless of what they are called, have access to at least 14 hours of daily out-of-cell time, with congregate, meaningful programming and activities without restraints and with at least several other people in group spaces conducive to meaningful human engagement.
3. Enhance Due Process Protections: For people facing separation, the Act will ensure neutral decision-makers independent of BOP and ICE, allow representation at hearings, restrict conduct that can result in separation to the most egregious conduct in need of an intensive intervention, and impose strict time limits on any separation.
4. Create Oversight & Enforcement Mechanisms: The Act will ensure a private cause of action for people to vindicate their rights, enhanced public data reporting, and oversight by government entities, the media, and community stakeholders.
5. Incentivise States & Localities to End Solitary: The Act will ensure states and localities that receive relevant funding end solitary confinement in line with the provisions of the Act and instead utilize proven alternative forms of separation.

SUMMARY OF THE HUMANE ALTERNATIVES TO LONG-TERM (HALT) SOLITARY CONFINEMENT ACT (passed in 2021 and went into effect in 2022):

HALT’s Key Mechanisms for Challenging Isolated Confinement:

• Creates More Humane & Effective Alternatives to Isolated Confinement: Any person separated from general population for more than 15 consecutive days must be in a separate secure Residential Rehabilitation Unit (RRU) – a rehabilitative & therapeutic unit providing 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.
• Ends Long-Term Isolated Confinement: No person may be held in isolated confinement more than 15 consecutive days nor 20 days total in any 60 day period. At these limits, a person must be released or diverted to the alternative RRU with more out-of-cell time, programs, and therapy.
• Restricts Criteria for Placement in Isolated Confinement or RRUs: A person can only be placed in segregated confinement for more than 3 days and up to 15 days, or be placed in an RRU, if the person is found to have engaged in more serious acts of physical injury, forced sexual acts, extortion, coercion, inciting serious disturbance, procuring deadly weapons or dangerous contraband, or escape.
• Bans Special Populations from Isolated Confinement: The department can never place in isolated confinement any person: 21 years or younger; 55 years or older; With a physical, mental, or medical disability; Who is pregnant; or Who is a new mother or caring for a child while inside.

Key Procedural and Other Protections:

• Enhances Due Process Protections Before Placement In Isolated Confinement or RRUs: For example, a person may have access to legal representation by pro bono attorneys, law students, or approved paralegals at hearings that could result in isolated confinement.
• Creates Mechanisms for Release from RRUs: H.A.L.T. requires meaningful review at least every 60 days to determine if a person shall be released from a residential rehabilitation unit. Also, a person must be released if their disciplinary sentence runs out; and, a person must be released after one year if they have not already been released, unless there are specified exceptional circumstances and approval by the corrections commissioner.
• Covers all Categories of People Who Currently Face Isolated Confinement: The bill applies to disciplinary confinement, administrative segregation, and protective custody, while excluding medical/mental health isolation. It covers people in Special Housing Units (SHU), S-block, Keeplock, and/or any isolation beyond 17 hours per day. It also applies to all state prisons and county jails in New York State.
• Other Protections: Staff working on isolated confinement units or RRUs, and hearing officers, must receive substantial relevant training. Departments of corrections must provide public reports on the number/categories of people in isolation and RRUs, and lengths of stay. Moreover, the Justice Center & State Commission of Correction provide outside oversight in order to assess implementation of the law.