NYTimes editorial, February 21, 2014
The New York State prison system has for years been among the nation’s worst when it comes to the overuse of solitary confinement. At any given time about 3,800 inmates across the state are held in windowless isolation for 23 hours a day, the vast majority for disciplinary infractions. The average length of a stay in solitary is five months, and from 2007 to 2011, nearly 2,800 people were in solitary for a year or more.
On Wednesday, corrections officials took a major step toward reform by agreeing to new guidelines for the maximum length prisoners may be placed in solitary. Those younger than 18 will receive at least five hours of exercise and other programming outside their cell five days a week. Solitary confinement will be presumptively prohibited for pregnant women, and inmates with developmental disabilities will be held there for no more than 30 days. Jail officials announced that they had stopped sending mentally ill inmates to solitary. Those inmates are now being diverted to psychiatric treatment in jail.
Wednesday’s agreement was the result of lawsuits by three prisoners, one of whom spent more than two years in solitary confinement for filing false legal documents.
Commentary
I have never understood why more federal and state judges that I knew personally and knew to be quite sensitive to cruelty and unfairness were not more vocal about the obviously cruel and unusual nature of segregation in the prison system even when they had the opportunity to address it in a case before them. I know it is the law, but a dissent or two would not have disturbed the status quo and may have been the gadfly if not the lightening rod to reform. One judge could have pied piper-ed a line towards reform. Instead it took a few lowly prisoners to file lawsuits to reform what was so obviously torture.
– David Zapp, Esq.