Many circumstances on Rikers Island could be deemed inhumane or immoral, but only one practice has been explicitly termed torture by the United Nations: prolonged solitary confinement. Its horrors were seared into New Yorkers’ consciousness by the ordeal of Kalief Browder, who took his own life after having spent nearly two years in solitary awaiting trial.
A City Council bill to ban solitary has the support of Speaker Adrienne Adams, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and the vast majority of the Council. The practice here is defined as keeping someone alone in a cell for more than four hours in a 24-hour period, or a collective 12 hours in a seven-day period, in addition to eight hours of daily sleep time and two hours to be counted — in all cases where it is not immediately necessary to “de-escalate conflict,” is badly flawed.
The Correction Department contends that it does not engage in this practice anyway and is already in compliance with an earlier state law that restricts solitary. If that’s the case, then it shouldn’t really mind the Council narrowly formalizing a prohibition. The problem here is that the Council bill not only bars a form of confinement that all involved, including Mayor Adams and Correction Commissioner Louis Molina, agree is inhumane, but dangerously restricts officers in what are often fluid and chaotic situations. If it passes in its current form, it would likely increase violence and chaos in already violent and chaotic jails.
A requirement that all inmates get a hearing before being placed in restrictive housing is terribly unwise. If someone is, say, slashing fellow detainees or correction officers, they must be immediately taken out of the general population. The Council should jettison this and overly constrictive language blocking the use of restrictive housing as a consequence for serious misconduct.
We have no problem defining what is and isn’t allowed to ensure, for instance, that all inmates get the true “out-of-cell” time they are promised. And having some due process for those in such housing makes sense. But not this way.
