NEWS: “Sick and in Solitary” on Rikers Island

February 19, 2013 by

By Maura R. O’Connor. Excerpted from The New York World.

rikers1Last summer, a 25-year-old robbery suspect at Rikers Island took a ball of concentrated soap meant to clean his jail cell and swallowed it. Jason Echeverria had been held for two months inside the Department of Correction’s Mental Health Assessment Unit for Infracted Inmates, where the confined typically spend 23 hours a day on lockdown. By swallowing the soap, Echeverria hoped to spring himself from his confinement; instead, for 20 minutes a corrections supervisor ignored his condition as he became violently sick and eventually died from the poisoning. The city’s medical examiner has found that the lack of immediate medical treatment constituted a homicide.

While Echeverria was being held in punitive segregation, New York City Department of Correction Commissioner Dora Schriro was assuring the city’s Board of Correction, which monitors her agency, that a long-awaited blueprint for dealing with the growing ranks of mentally ill at Rikers was nearing completion.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: All Posts, News Tagged With: , , ,

NEWS: State Bar Association Calls on New York to “Profoundly Restrict” Its Use of Solitary Confinement

February 18, 2013 by

By Jean Casella and James Ridgeway. Reprinted from Solitary Watch.

upstate 1The New York State Bar Association last month passed a resolution calling for a dramatic transformation and curtailment of solitary and other forms of isolated confinement it its state prisons and city jails. The strongly worded resolution, written by NYSBA’s Civil Rights Committee, cites “the damage caused by prolonged solitary confinement and the ability to ensure prison and public safety without resorting to its use.”It urges the New York State legislature to hold hearings on solitary confinement, and on Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and the state and city departments of corrections to undertake sweeping changes in their prison practices.

After laying out the problem, the document presents the following resolution:

RESOLVED, that the New York State Bar Association calls upon the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) and New York City Department of Correction (DOC) to profoundly restrict the use of long-term solitary confinement, by adopting clear and objective standards to ensure that prisoners are separated from the general prison population only in very limited and very legitimate circumstances and only for the briefest period and under the least restrictive conditions practicable.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: All Posts, News Tagged With: , , ,

NEWS: Human Rights, Mental Health and Faith-Based Organizations ask U.N. to Investigate Solitary Confinement in New York Prisons

February 18, 2013 by

Press release. Reprinted from the New York Civil Liberties Union site.

UNFebruary 5, 2013 — The New York Civil Liberties Union – joined by more than three dozen representatives from human rights, civil rights, mental health and faith-based organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture – today submitted a letter to the United Nations requesting an investigation into the use of solitary confinement in New York State prisons.

The letter – addressed to U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Méndez – alleges that New York’s use of extreme isolation and deprivation is inhumane, unsafe, arbitrary and implicates fundamental human rights protections, including “the right to be protected from torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” and “the right to be free from discrimination.”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: All Posts, News Tagged With: , , , ,

NEWS: NYCLU Lawsuit Challenges New York State’s Use of Solitary Confinement

February 17, 2013 by

Press release. Reprinted from the New York Civil Liberties Union site.

barsDecember 6, 2012 — The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal lawsuit challenging New York prison official’s system-wide policies and practices governing solitary confinement that are responsible for the arbitrary and unjustified use of extreme isolation on thousands of individuals incarcerated in New York’s prisons every year.

The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiff, Leroy Peoples, spent 780 days locked in tiny, barren cell the size of an elevator with another prisoner for 24 hours a day as punishment for misbehavior that involved no violence and no threat to the safety or security of others.

“New York’s prison authorities permit the use extreme isolation – one of the harshest punishments one human can impose on another – as a disciplinary tool of first resort for violating almost any prison rule, no matter how minor,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “This cruel and arbitrary punishment endangers prisoners and corrections officials alike, and it decreases safety in our prisons and communities.”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: All Posts, News Tagged With: , , , ,
« Previous Page
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox

Join other followers: