Mayor Eric Adams declared an emergency executive order on July 27 to suspend provisions delineated by Local Law 42 of 2024 – better known as the city’s new “solitary confinement ban.” He attempted to block the bill’s passing earlier this year, but a city council supermajority overrode the veto.
The law technically went into effect a day after the emergency declaration. The mayor’s order largely suspends its safeguards restricting de-escalation confinement, emergency lock-ins and use of restraints, alleging safety concerns for NYC Department of Correction (DOC) staff and detainees.
To be clear, while the Adams administration did not suspend the legislation’s official ban on solitary confinement, the mayor maintains the practice was already abolished in 2019. But that only applies to its conventional definition established by the United Nations’ Nelson Mandela Rules entailing the “confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact.”
There’s no universal definition for solitary confinement for the law’s proponents and they say research used for the bill determined even shorter stints in isolation can be severely damaging. And the city continues to separate detainees in cells under other practices that don’t meet the U.N.’s definition of solitary confinement, particularly for safety and disciplinary measures. Local Law 42 doesn’t blanket ban those practices, but restricts their use and requires further transparency, red tape and oversight when employed.
“It’s more than just being in line with the U.N., it’s being in line with the citizens and doing the best for the city,” said solitary confinement survivor and organizer Five Mualimm-ak.
Then there’s the matter of checks and balances. Adams vocally opposed Local Law 42’s passing this past January, but his veto was powerless from the City Council’s 42-9 vote in favor to override it. Council member Carlina Rivera, who co-sponsored the bill with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, called the move a “workaround.”
“By the Mayor declaring a state of emergency simply to issue emergency executive orders that allows this administration to avoid complying with a law the day before it takes effect is such an unprecedented abuse of mayoral power,” Rivera told the AmNews.
HALT Solitary Confinement co-director Victor Pate said the administration’s approach to legislation like Local Law 42 reflects how the system does not benefit people of color, who are disproportionately detained in city jails.
“There is an inequity in our legal system as to how laws are applied and who they are applicable to, and who it affects the most,” Pate said. “The most adverse recipients of the legal system [are] people of color. That is translated over into the conditions under which people are held, people that haven’t been convicted—pretrial detainees—and their rights are being trampled upon.
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“A law is passed and you refuse to follow that law and you’re not being held accountable…and of course, the majority of people that are affected by that are people of color, across the board, across the criminal legal system.”
The Adams administration argues that Local Law 42 strips the DOC of the ability to separate detainees after “serious acts of violence.” The executive order temporarily weakens four-hour time limits imposed by the legislation for how long someone can be confined during a lock-in or de-escalation.
“Local Law 42 would drastically alter and impact the department’s core strategy for addressing violent misconduct, its restrictive housing program,” City Hall Chief Counsel Lisa Zornberg said during a July 30 press conference. “Implementing the law would require changes that conflict with standard sound correctional practices and would therefore be dangerous.”
Additionally, the administration also reiterates the law would prevent DOC from handcuffing detainees during transport between the jails and courts. The bill’s sponsors dispute the claim, pointing to the actual law’s language allowing restraints under “individual determination” if “necessary to prevent an imminent risk of self-injury or injury to other persons.”
“The [Adams] administration has repeatedly asserted that Local Law 42 entirely prohibits restraining incarcerated individuals,” Rivera said. “It does not.”
Local Law 42 only explicitly mentions restraints during transport in the matter of detainees under 22 and specifically allows it as an exception, as long as they aren’t secured to an “immovable object,” according to a spokesperson for Rivera.
And the administration continues pointing to compliance with the Nunez monitor, a court-appointed watchdog tasked with ensuring reforms mandated by a class-action lawsuit over jail conditions get properly implemented. The monitor previously posed concerns about staff and detainee safety under Local Law 42. Back in January, Public Advocate Williams dismissed the Adams administration’s use of compliance to Nunez for opposing Local Law 42 as bad faith.
“The administration, which routinely undermines and ignores the federal monitor, cannot credibly use the monitor’s condemnation of its long-standing failures and deceptions around running Rikers Island in order to condemn an effort to actually fix it,” Williams said in his Jan. 16 statement. “It is not our job to create laws that conform to failing systems. It is our job to create laws to change them, and if you want something different to happen, you have to do something different.”
The emergency order follows the recent death of Charizma Jones, who DOC staff allegedly claimed could not leave her Rikers Island jail cell for safety reasons when health workers repeatedly attempted to take her vitals due to a serious health condition sustained just weeks after she was placed on “RED ID” status for “an alleged assault on staff.” She was later taken to a hospital and died at age 23. An investigation is ongoing.
Local Law 42 now mandates “visual and aural observation” for those held in de-escalation confinement and requires referring any health concerns to medical professionals. The law notably received support from healthcare union 1199SEIU. Its interim political director Helen Schaub called solitary “a discredited and cruel practice” and said it was wrong to suspend Local Law 42.
DOC spokesperson Annais Morales said the department is “working to determine the safest and most efficient way to deter violent acts” in city jails and adds that current Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie agrees with abolishing the “inhumane” practice of conventional solitary confinement. The department also echoed that conventional solitary confinement practices in city jails ended in 2019.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.