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The New York Metropolis Council moved to largely ban solitary confinement in metropolis jails in a 39-7 vote Wednesday and likewise added new restrictions on different security administration techniques.
The council’s newly handed invoice would prohibit putting inmates in solitary confinement for greater than eight hours at night time to sleep or for greater than two hours through the day in a 24-hour interval, until for functions of de-escalating violence or emergency lock-ins. Restrictions within the invoice embody limitations on de-escalation confinement, emergency lock-ins, and the usage of restraints.
One of many extra controversial parts of the invoice provides new due course of issues for the position of prisoners in restrictive housing. Restrictive housing is outlined within the invoice as “any housing space that separates incarcerated individuals from the final jail inhabitants on the premise of safety considerations or self-discipline.” The invoice requires a listening to and ensures due course of rights the place an inmate can contest removing from the final inhabitants.
Town council cited the extremely damaging results of solitary confinement on prisoners, together with a heightened threat of loss of life, and considerations about its disproportionate impact on minorities as causes for passing the invoice:
Solitary confinement has [been shown] to induce acute nervousness, melancholy, psychosis, and different impairments which can significantly cut back one’s capability to reintegrate upon launch. In New York Metropolis, these disastrous results are felt nearly completely by Black and brown folks, who make up over 90% of all folks in metropolis jails.
New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams denounced the invoice in an announcement, saying that it posed a menace to the Division of Corrections’ capacity to guard inmates and jail guards. Adams asserted that, whereas he opposes solitary confinement, he can be “reviewing all choices” in response to the invoice. The invoice both requires Adams’ signature or a subsequent two-thirds vote of the council to beat a possible veto.
The trouble to ban solitary confinement in NYC comes after different notable instances in regards to the topic, together with a lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania prisoners regarding total circumstances they described as “torturous” and a latest refusal from the US Supreme Courtroom to listen to a problem from an inmate of the Pontiac Correctional Facility in Illinois over train deprivation.
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