Proponents of Solitary Confinement Attempt to Stifle Reform - Solitary Watch # Proponents of Solitary Confinement Attempt to Stifle Reform by Katie Rose Quandt | September 8, 2026 When Jerome Wright hears from people incarcerated in New York prisons, they describe a system in crisis.
solitarywatch.org · Katie Rose Quandt · September 8, 2026
Proponents of Solitary Confinement Attempt to Stifle Reform - Solitary Watch
# Proponents of Solitary Confinement Attempt to Stifle Reform
by Katie Rose Quandt | September 8, 2026
When Jerome Wright hears from people incarcerated in New York prisons, they describe a system in crisis.
“I can tell you, unequivocally, from people in maximum, medium, every type of security they have in there, that the system has devolved into basically a lockdown,” said Wright, co-director of the HALT Solitary Campaign, who spent more than seven years in solitary confinement in New York prisons. “It’s almost like the entire system is in solitary confinement … People are losing their minds, literally. Some people are committing suicide. But most of all, nobody is getting any of the help they were sent to prison for.”
This should not be the case in New York, where lawmakers in 2021 passed the HALT Act, designed to limit which infractions can be punished with solitary confinement, cap stints in solitary to 15 days (after which people can be moved to special, non-isolation units), and ban certain vulnerable populations from solitary altogether. Yet as lawsuits, a series of investigations in New York Focus, and reports by the Offices of the Inspector General, independent oversight bodies, legislators, and criminal justice reform groups have outlined, New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) has failed to implement the law properly, and people incarcerated across the state continue to be isolated and abused.
This was most recently backed up by a damning indepen dent report, commissioned by DOCCS and released quietly on July 3. The report outlined “systemic shortcomings in oversight, accountability, and culture” in New York prisons, as well as racial bias and an entrenched “us versus them mentality” among correctional staff.
Yet correctional unions have responded by demanding that the state eliminate the law they are failing to follow. The state correctional officers’ union (NYSCOPBA) and Republican politicians have asked for repeal or weakening of the HALT Act, and their talking points have gained a foothold across New York media, appearing in newspapers and radio stations in Albany, Plattsburgh, Elizabethtown, Watertown, and Malone.
Over the past two decades, as the movement to end or limit the use of solitary confinement has grown throughout the country, correctional officials and unions often double down on claims that long-term solitary confinement is a necessary tool to isolate dangerous people and deter violence. Such arguments have been used to block reforms in other states, including legislation modeled on the HALT Act.
But studies repeatedly find no evidence that solitary actually makes prisons safer. In fact, prisons that have piloted alternative units that separate people from general population without isolating them have seen decreased rule infractions for violence. That was the path the state legislature and HALT supporters hoped New York would take after the HALT Act’s implementation in 2022. But as Wright’s descriptions and the recent DOCCS-commissioned report make clear, the brutal and punitive environment within New York prisons leads to a dependence on harsh tactics like solitary confinement.
##### Undermining the HALT Act
According to government and media investigations, DOCCS has failed over the past four years to properly document its use of solitary confinement. It has also been found to hold some people in solitary beyond 15 days, and illegally place some people with disabilities in solitary. The law has substantially reduced the number of people in SHU, the official name of solitary units. But as Wright explained, even general-population units are often locked down for most of the day.
“Corrections officers have been against HALT since before it was passed by the legislature … have continued to be resistant to implementing HALT, and have also continued to scapegoat HALT for any violence or the conditions in general inside the prison system,” said Bernadette Rabuy, a senior policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).
NYSCOPBA unsuccessfully sued to block HALT before it went into effect, claiming the law evinced “a deliberate and callous indifference” to lives and safety. Then-union president Michael B. Powers warned state legislators that “the violent predators that lurk inside our prison facilities can’t wait for HALT to be implemented.” In the ensuing years, the union has consistently lobbied the legislature to repeal HALT.
Correctional officers (often called COs) took their most drastic step in early 2025, when around 10,000 walked off the job in an illegal work stoppage, demanding HALT rollbacks. The timing was suspicious: Officers declared the wildcat strike just hours after a special prosecutor announced the arrests of six officers for beating Robert Brooks, a 43-year-old Black man, to death in December 2024, in a brutal attack caught on video.
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) called the National Guard into the understaffed prisons, and incarcerated people were locked down, without access to programming, visitation, or recreation. At least eight incarcerated people died during the 22-day work stoppage, including by suicide or delayed medical attention. During the strike, officers turned off their body cameras and beat Messiah Nantwi, age 22, to death, while he was shackled. An officer planted a knife in Nantwi’s cell in an attempt to cover up the murder.
Ultimately, the deal forged between Gov. Hochul and NYSCOPBA to end the strike suspended parts of HALT for 90 days. It also created a committee tasked with proposing HALT rollbacks. Although the committee—made up entirely of union and correctional representatives—has no power to amend legislation, its existence gives COs and their supporters something official-sounding to point to, and inspired Senate Republicans to introduce HALT rollback legislation in March.
State prisons have still not recovered from the strike. “Things seem to be paralyzed following the illegal job action strike more than a year ago,” said Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, an independent prison watchdog established by state law. Staffing has not returned to pre-strike levels, which already had many vacant posts, leaving overworked staff in a “morale crisis.” Meanwhile, “incarcerated people aren’t getting access to the services, programming, and out-of-cell time they once did. So people are just spending huge amounts of time idle,” Scaife said. “That contributes to the frustration, anxiety, and tension.” These dire conditions are particularly damaging for the large portion of the population with mental illness.
“It feels like I’m in SHU,” wrote Ronald Alston about conditions in general population, in a late-2025 legal affirmation. “I don’t get to socialize. I have no human contact; we’re yelling at one another all day. I feel frustrated. I feel taxed and tired—really tired.”
##### Solitary Confinement Does Not Reduce Violence
At the heart of opponents of the HALT Act’s claims is the argument that solitary confinement is necessary to curtail violence in prisons. That is not what the evidence shows.
In keeping with earlier findings, a 2025 meta-analysis concluded that punitive solitary confinement does not appear to improve institutional safety, and “may even have a criminogenic effect on subsequent offending.” Solitary may even make communities less safe. Time spent in solitary—which causes well-documented psychological and physical harm—is correlated with a higher likelihood of being rearrested after release.
In 2024, 12 former correctional officials, including a former DOCCS commissioner, wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, disputing “the myth that solitary is necessary for safety.” Five former correctional leaders expressed similar concerns in a 2021 amicus brief, writing: “Rather than reducing vi