NEW YORK — New York’s city jails watchdog agency has moved a step closer to banning solitary confinement, voting Tuesday to use a policymaking process to end the controversial practice.
The Board of Correction vote to employ the City Administrative Procedure Act regarding jail conditions starts a mandatory process that agencies have to go through to change policy — and would virtually end solitary and other forms of restrictive housing by November.
The proposed rules, first announced Monday, would require inmates to have a minimum of 10 hours outside their cells — an increase of six hours — and five hours of programs daily.
Inmates who would normally be put in punitive segregation — known as solitary confinement — would instead get individualized behavioral support plans under the new rules.
“This is a comprehensive package of rules that we hope will be a model for the nation,” board Chairwoman Jennifer Jones Austin said at Tuesday’s meeting.
The board and the city Correction Department also agreed jail leaders will develop a new plan by April 15 regarding restraint desks — devices used to prevent violent young adults from harming correction officers and other inmates.
Correction Commissioner Cynthia Brann stressed such measures are necessary and used only as a last resort. She said there’s currently 27 young people — less than 6% of the young adult population — in Enhanced Supervision Housing, a type of restrictive housing where restraint desks are used.
“When the department cannot keep people safe, we all fail. We fail every single young person in custody, who cannot focus on their programs, or sleep comfortably for fear of being attacked. We fail every staff member who comes to work thinking about whether today will be the day that they are attacked for doing their job,” Brann said at the meeting.
“If we did not need it, we would not use it,” she continued. “We can also not create a new ... alternative and maintain safety amidst all the other work that we’re doing right now. It simply cannot be done.”
The decisions come a day after the Correction Department released nearly two years' worth of staffer disciplinary records, and one day before the City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee budget hearing — all while concerns grow over staffing shortages, officers working overtime and a ballooning jail population.
As of Tuesday, there were more than 5,600 inmates in city jails — about 1,800 more than last summer after hundreds of coronavirus-driven releases in 2020, city data show.
Brann said 300 people are expected to be transferred by late March into state prisons, which stopped accepting inmates from local facilities in December due to a surge in COVID-19.
More than 800 inmates in city jails have gotten a first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, Correctional Health Services Senior Vice President Dr. Patsy Yang said at the board meeting. As of Sunday, the jails saw a seven-day average positivity rate of 1.70%.
