By Keri Blakinger. Reprinted from examiner.com.
Photo: Stacy Burnett
On Monday, hundreds of activists gathered outside the Capitol in Albany to lobby in favor of a bill that would make major changes to the way that solitary confinement is used in New York’s prisons and jails.
The bill, called the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act seeks to address the underlying behavioral problems that lead inmates to be placed in solitary confinement by offering increased treatment options. For inmates sentenced to more than 15 days in solitary, HALT would ensure that they receive six hours of out-of-cell programming and treatment per day in new units called residential rehabilitation units, or RRUs. Certain vulnerable populations — such as pregnant women, inmates under 21, elderly inmates, mentally or physically handicapped inmates, and LGBTQI inmates — would be excluded from being in solitary confinement for even one day. Instead, such populations would be referred directly to RRUs.
As Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement reports, there are approximately 4,000 men, women, and children in solitary confinement in New York’s state prisons and many more in its city and county jails. Currently, Solitary Watch reports that 5 out of 6 people in solitary confinement in New York are there for non-violent rules violations, including such minor offenses as having too many stamps or talking back to an officer. Solitary confinement entails spending 22 to 24 hours per day locked in a cell approximately the size of an elevator.
Solitary confinement survivor Five Mualimm-ak told a local news channel about the torturous conditions, saying, “We’re talking about human isolation. We’re talking about sensory deprivation. We’re talking about our God-given rights.”
One of the speakers at the rally was renowned academic and activist Cornel West. He spoke passionately about issues of race in regards to mass incarceration, saying, “Everybody knows 12 percent of those on the chocolate side, 12 percent of those on the vanilla side of flying high in the friendly skies every week taking drugs, but 65 percent of the convicteds [on drug offenses] are chocolate. That just lets us know that the legacy of white supremacy is still operating in America.”
This can not go on a day longer. A big demonstration needs to take place of people locking themselves in a Court room, or something of this sort. A mass of people locked in a room until this stops. It’s 2015 and we still look like were in Selma. It is about time that adolescents are no longer placed in solitary confinement at Rikers, and we have a lot more work to do. To read that this legislation makes Rikers now leading as a role model for others jails throughout our nation- is a very scary thought. New York, the USA as a whole, WE ARE BIGGER THAN THIS.