The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act went into effect at the end of March 2022, and was meant to be a game-changer for carceral punishment in New York.
State Prisons Are Routinely Violating New York’s Landmark Solitary Confinement Law
Chris Gelardi and Emily Brown
The law limited the types of infractions that can land someone in isolation and barred New York state prisons and local jails from sending the youngest incarcerated people, the elderly, and those diagnosed with mental illnesses or disabilities to solitary. It also prohibited them from holding anyone in typical “segregated confinement” — which involves being locked in a cell, alone, for up to 17 hours a day — for longer than 15 consecutive days (or 20 days within a two-month period). For those with longer isolation sentences, which can last weeks or months, HALT created special units to provide a less punitive, “rehabilitative” environment, with guaranteed access to recreation and programming.
The law also included a relatively novel and crucial provision that granted people facing the possibility of solitary the right to representation at disciplinary hearings “by any attorney or law student, or by any paralegal or incarcerated person,” with limited exceptions. This aspect of HALT is critical in shielding incarcerated people from erroneous solitary sentences — as evidenced by Sam’s story, as well as the prison system’s well established history of improperly using segregation for retaliation or as punishment for minor offenses.
But at Bedford Hills, New York’s only maximum-security prison for women, implementing HALT has been an uphill battle. My own experience as a prisoners’ rights advocate and jailhouse lawyer currently incarcerated at Bedford Hills, together with accounts by other women and a former employee, illustrate how the prison, as well as the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) administration, have circumvented both the spirit and the letter of the law.
