For now, the state can’t halt HALT. A judge granted a preliminary injunction against state prisons employing solitary confinement despite laws banning the practice last Wednesday, July 2, thanks to an ongoing lawsuit. This follows days after the courts seemingly upheld Local Law 42 of 2024, which bans solitary confinement in New York City jails, including those on Rikers Island.
An illegal corrections officer strike across the state earlier this year led to the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) suspending “parts of” the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement (HALT) Act banning solitary confinement in New York state prisons. Corrections strikes are illegal under the state’s Taylor Law.
The state law, passed in 2021, mandates daily out-of-cell time and programming for all incarcerated individuals while prohibiting corrections from isolating certain populations, including those who are under 21 or over 55, pregnant or post-partum, or live with disabilities. HALT limits prisons from confining anyone to a cell for more than 17 hours for three consecutive days in most cases and 15 days “for the most serious infractions.”
In April, the Legal Aid Society filed a class-action lawsuit in what the public defense organization alleged was “a far-reaching and unlawful rollback of HALT through a purportedly temporary suspension of the statute to placate striking officers and entice them back to work.”
Initially, what the suspension exactly entailed remained opaque. Legal Aid Society staff attorney Katherine Haas, who represents the plaintiffs, said she only acquired precise information through the litigation process.
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“When DOCCS announced this suspension, they framed it as suspending ‘programming-related’ elements of HALT,” said Haas. “We did not really understand what that meant, because they didn’t state which specific provisions of HALT they were talking about, so we filed an order to show cause in a different lawsuit we have about HALT, asking DOCCS to answer what is this whole suspension? What authority are you claiming you have?
“And that was when we found out it was not just about not providing programming. They were, in fact, claiming they did not have to abide by any of the limits on solitary confinement for this 90-day period, which ended up lasting even longer [and] until this preliminary injunction was issued.”
Jerome Wright, who co-directs the #HALTSolitary campaign that led efforts to pass the state’s eponymous HALT law and the city’s Local Law 42, said many formerly incarcerated people already knew how bad things were because of friends, family, and acquaintances who reached out to them. They connected the Legal Aid Society to those individuals in some instances so the lawyers could investigate and verify claims of allegedly unlawful solitary confinement practices.
“I used to say we were in pre-Attica stages, but we are at Attica 2.0 right now,” said Wright. “Every single thing that those brothers died for and fought about is what is happening right now.”
One named class plaintiff, Harlemite Alfonso Smalls, was allegedly locked in a cell for 22 to 24 hours a day for two and a half weeks. He now “has a hard time turning off his mind” and struggles with falling asleep, according to the complaint. The 29-year-old also feels short-tempered and claustrophobic in isolation, leading to thoughts of self-harm.
“Mr. Smalls is eager for more recreation and programming,” reads the complaint. “He wants to feel the sun, breathe fresh air, and relieve stress through recreation. He wants to interact with other incarcerated people and learn new things through programming.”
Solitary confinement’s negative effects are well-documented. Suicide rates were five times higher among New Yorkers in solitary confinement between 2015 and 2019. The practice is also linked to significant physical health conditions. Under the United Nation’s Mandela Laws, more than 15 days in solitary confinement is considered torture.
The formerly incarcerated Wright called the failed attempts to suspend the HALT law and Local Law 42 “Trumpian.” A New York State legislature supermajority voted to pass HALT in 2021. Then-governor and current third-party mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law.
Similarly, a City Council supermajority voted to pass Local Law 42 last year. “When we have had problems in our community, and we’ve tried to deal with them in any number of ways, the powers that be have appealed to us [to] just do it the right way,” said Wright. Yet despite overwhelming lawmaker support, solitary bans continue facing attacks.
Mayor Eric Adams initially attempted to veto the bill for Local Law 42 last year. Thanks to a 42 to 9 supermajority, the City Council overrode the veto, so Adams employed emergency powers usually reserved for hurricanes and pandemics to suspend the city’s solitary confinement ban indefinitely, all the while claiming the practice did not exist in city jails.
“A state of emergency is hereby declared to exist within the correction facilities operated by DOC because of the imminent effective date of Local Law 42 and the risks to health and safety that implementation of that law at this time and under current circumstances presents,” wrote Adams last July.
The City Council and the Public Advocate filed a joint lawsuit against the mayor last December to overturn the emergency order.
“No other mayor in the City’s history has ever used these emergency powers as an end-run around a local law, and a finding otherwise — that the Mayor can override a supermajority of Council members — would set a dangerous precedent,” read the complaint. “In our system of government, there is a balance of powers between the legislature that makes laws and the executive who executes them. Council members, and their votes, represent the will of the people.”
Last Monday, June 30, a state-level judge ruled that “Mayor Adams acted beyond the scope of his emergency powers and that he cannot suspend the law because he disapproves of its impact” and barred him from declaring a new state of emergency to stop Local Law 42.
“Solitary confinement has been proven to cause physical, psychological, and emotional harm, making jails and our city less safe,” said Council Speaker Adrienne Adams in a June 30 statement. “The [c]ouncil duly enacted Local Law 42 because we cannot maintain the status quo of failed policies and practices that put everyone in danger. Now that the mayor’s emergency orders are no longer in effect, the mayoral administration must bring the [c]ity into compliance with the law.”
However, federal judge Laura Swain granted the Adams administration’s motion for a temporary restraining order to pause “certain parts” of Local Law 42’s implementation due to a separate lawsuit. Swain oversees the longstanding Nunez case, which installed a monitorship and, more recently, a receivership over the city’s jail system due to long-time safety issues on Rikers Island.
“Let’s be clear: Solitary confinement has not been used in New York City jails since 2019, and Local Law 42 creates a new definition of solitary confinement out of thin air and then aims to ban that,” said a city hall spokesperson. “As Mayor Adams has repeatedly said, enforcement of Local Law 42 as written would harm the safety of people in our custody, our correctional staff, court staff, and the public, and we are grateful that Judge Swain has paused its implementation.”
The temporary restraining order limits enacting Local Law 42’s “conflicting” provisions toward restrictive housing, restraint use, de-escalation confinement procedures, and security lock-in procedures. Swain pointed to concerns from her monitorship’s concerns over safety and wrote that Nunez monitor Steve J. Martin requested more time to approve those provisions with or without modifications.
“The Defendants, Class Members[,] and non-parties are likely to suffer irreparable harm if the Conflicting Provisions are permitted to go into effect, caused by violations of this Court’s orders and unsafe conditions and procedures that will be created by the implementation of [Local Law 42],” wrote Swain.
Like Local Law 42, the Nunez lawsuit stems from needing to improve jail conditions but can only focus narrowly on constitutional compliance, specifically in regard to violence and security. Earlier this year, the AmNews obtained a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin, signed last year by leading correctional experts, including Martin, arguing against solitary confinement as a safety measure.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams told the AmNews the restraining order is temporary and that he is currently figuring out the next steps.
“We always remind folks that Local Law 42 is not in effect,” said Williams. “What they’re doing now is a problem because it’s still causing violence. When you have a population of Black and Brown and poor people, folks tend to treat them as disposable. [You would] think a mayor who comes from those communities would be different, but he’s not.
“And out of sight, out of mind, which is one of the reasons why we [are] going to shut Rikers down, so it’s something that you just can’t not think about. It’s easy to try to throw people away in solitary. It is harder to do things that will make everyone safer: It takes investment, it takes infrastructure, it takes will.”
A DOCCS spokesperson said the department is currently reviewing the decision.
Black Folks have 99 things far more important than Solitary Confinement, but at least this miniscule protest won’t cause harm like the BLM Movement did. By that I mean BLM continued the fracture between our communities and the Police that has needed healing ever since the Civil Rights Movement if not before. In addition people that don’t care about Black People reacted negatively to the very title. While White Supremacy has risen and been given legitamacy by Trump and the people who have always prevented equality people need to wake up and not waste engergy on minutae!