A Law Hasn’t Fixed Solitary Confinement in New York. Can a Lawsuit?
A new legal challenge takes aim at the New York prison department for locking hundreds of people up in solitary over offenses that should be exempt.
Chris Gelardi · April 7, 2023

The lawsuit exposes previously unreported DOCCS policies that effectively instruct officers to violate solitary confinement law. | Maia Hibbett / New York Focus
- State Prisons Are Routinely Violating New York’s Landmark Solitary Confinement Law
- Prisons Are Illegally Throwing People With Disabilities Into Solitary Confinement
- Solitary by Another Name: How State Prisons Are Using ‘Therapeutic’ Units to Evade Reforms
- Lesser Infractions Aren’t Supposed to Land You in Solitary Confinement. They Do Anyway.
- New York’s Prison Chief Ordered Guards to Illegally Shackle People to Desks
- To Implement a New Law, Prisons Likely Broke Another
- Can Anyone Make New York Prisons Follow Solitary Confinement Law?
- Prison Department Writes Its Way Out of Following Solitary Confinement Law — Again

Chris Gelardi is a reporter for New York Focus investigating the state’s criminal-legal system. His work has appeared in more than a dozen other outlets, most frequently The Nation, The Intercept, and The Appeal. He is a past recipient of awards from Columbia… more
Also filed in
Criminal Justice
The policy and its sudden reversal will be among Acting Commissioner Anthony Annucci’s last acts.
New York prisons may have effectively banned journalism behind bars.
The governor’s team coordinated meetings between her failed chief judge nominee and Senate Republicans in the days before a key committee vote, emails show.
Also filed in
New York State
A new letter from the federal government is energizing a push to expand health insurance for undocumented New Yorkers, but time is running out.
Some counties pay social services workers so little, the people who administer benefits end up applying themselves.
Formerly incarcerated "peers" offer drug counseling to people in county jails — when they can get in.