Call to end solitary confimement continues on anniversary of former inmates’ deaths
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The families of Layleen Polanco and Kalief Browder joined activists to call for an end to solitary confinement on Monday, June 7, 2021. Photo via #HALTSolitary/Twitter
By Rachel Vick
Activists, solitary survivors and family members of former Rikers inmates Layleen Polanco and Kelief Browder gathered on the anniversary of their deaths to call on Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Board of Correction and the City Council to end solitary confinement.
The march from Manhattan Supreme Court to City Hall comes two days after the city’s announcement of the final plan to transform the solitary cells into sectioned spaces that opponents call “solitary by another name.”
“They say they’re gonna end solitary, yet they want to keep people in a cage within a cage,” said #HALTSolitary organizer Anisah Sabur. “I have been in solitary. This is a torturous and deadly practice. We can no longer allow another loved one to die from solitary confinement. We all are human and we must be treated as such.”
Advocates with #HALTsolitary are demanding at least 14 hours of out-of-cell time a day with restraint-free programming and “meaningful human engagement.”
The recently released plan to uphold minimum standards only requires 10 hours out of cell, depending on their Risk Management and Accountability System rating, which evaluates an incarcerated person’s security risk. Lower security risks will be granted 12.
Amendments intended to support humane treatment while in a city jail include removing a section code that allowed wardens to read certain inmate mail without warning. It also outlines timelines for changes that the Board of Correction says will take more time than allotted.
Polanco was placed in solitary due to her gender identity and against medical advice, according to her sister Melania Brown. Polanco died after nine days in the Restrictive Housing Unit on Rikers Island on June 7, 2019.
Brown said that the city’s unfulfilled promise to end solitary confinement is an affront to her sister’s memory.
“The Mayor made my family a promise that he would end solitary confinement but he has broken that promise,” she said. “Yet they have the nerve to have a transgender flag up on City Hall. You will not use my sister’s name in vain.”
“If I have to fight until my last breath to end solitary confinement, I will do that to get justice for my sister,” she added.
A 2020 study from Cornell University analyzing Danish prisons found that former inmates who spent time in solitary were 60 percent more likely to commit suicide than their general population counterparts.
Browder spent two of his three years pre-trial for charges that were eventually dropped in Rikers solitary and committed suicide on June 6, 2015 — two years after his release.
“We are all here for one thing: the humanity of our families,” said Akeem Browder, Founder of the Kalief Browder Foundation. “We’re here because our families died. We have suffering in our hearts, NYC must end this torture of solitary confinement. We should have been done with this long ago. Kalief did not have to die.”
