The state legislature passed the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act in 2021, and it went into full effect on March 31, 2022. The law placed strict limitations on whom prisons and jails could place in solitary confinement, what infractions they could send them there for, and how long they could keep them there.
Five months after a law to scale back solitary confinement went into effect, a majority of the New York prison system’s solitary population had been held there for longer than the law permits.
Lawmakers banned solitary confinement for people with disabilities. But the state prison agency has crafted its own policies.
A landmark solitary confinement reform law created a new, “rehabilitative” type of isolation unit. In practice, they’re often little different from the solitary units they were meant to replace.
New York prisons have illegally sent at least 1,100 people to solitary confinement for infractions that aren’t eligible for the punishment, a New York Focus analysis has found.
Anthony Annucci’s internal memo tells staff to restrain incarcerated people during any out-of-cell time, affecting at least 5,000.
Legislators told the prison department it was violating a solitary confinement reform law. So it ignored them.
A recent hearing was legislators’ chance to have acting prison commissioner Anthony Annucci explain himself. They didn’t make him.
After months of ignoring reforms, the corrections department published new rules. They look a lot like the old rules.
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.