NY Must Reinstate Solitary Confinement Limits This Month

A New York judge temporarily blocked New York’s corrections department from rolling back a law limiting the use of solitary confinement in prisons and jails.

The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision’s decision to suspend portions of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act “is likely to be determined arbitrary and capricious,” Albany County Supreme Court Justice Daniel Lynch said Tuesday in a preliminary injunction order. The corrections department “has wholly failed to demonstrate that the continuing suspension of HALT’s programming requirements and cell confinement restrictions has a rational basis in fact,” he added.

Lynch set the injunction ...