New York Agrees to Overhaul Solitary Confinement in Prisons
New York prison officials have decided to overhaul their use of solitary confinement with the aim of significantly reducing the number of inmates held in isolation, cutting the maximum length of stay and improving their living conditions. The $62 million settlement is the result of a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union over the treatment of inmates in solitary confinement in the prisons. However the settlement agreement still needs to be approved by a federal judge.
As per details , 4,000 inmates are locked in concrete 6-by-10-foot cells, sometimes for years, with little if any human contact, no access to rehabilitative programs. “This is the end hopefully of an era where people are just thrown into the box for an unlimited amount of time on the whim of a corrections officer,” said Taylor Pendergrass, the civil liberties union’s lead counsel on the case. “This will not be the end of the road for solitary confinement reform, but we really think it’s a watershed moment.” It has been realized by New York State that that solitary confinement is not only inhumane but detrimental to public safety and has committed to changing the culture of solitary within state prisons. The agreement also requires the state to retrain its 20,000 prison guards on de-escalation and other techniques, caps the number of days to 30 a prisoner will serve for a first-time, nonviolent offense, reduces the number of violations that carry solitary sentences and for the first time imposes a three-month maximum sentence for most rule violations.
