De Blasio quietly keeps solitary confinement intact
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Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order Monday allowing again for the use of solitary confinement in the city’s jails. Photo via the Mayor’s Office/Flickr
By Jacob Kaye
Mayor Bill de Blasio delayed the enactment of recently passed city rules prohibiting solitary confinement late Monday night in yet another effort to quell the chaos on Rikers Island.
The mayor passed an executive order suspending a series of Board of Correction minimum standards this week, including the use of the Risk Management Accountability System, which was first introduced over the summer as an alternative to solitary confinement.
De Blasio, who filed paperwork in what appears to be a run for governor this week, cited the jail’s staffing issues in passing the order.
“Excessive staff absenteeism among correction officers and supervising officers has contributed to a rise in unrest and disorder, and creates a serious risk to the necessary maintenance and delivery of sanitary conditions; access to basic services including showers, meals, visitation, religious services, commissary, and recreation; and prompt processing at intake,” the executive order reads. “This Order is given to address the effects of excessive staff absenteeism and in order to address the conditions at DOC facilities.”
In all, the order suspends eight BOC minimum standards.
One of the rules suspended in the order surrounds involuntary lock-in. Prior to the order, which will be in effect until the end of the week, incarcerated people can not be involuntarily locked in their cell unless it’s during sleeping hours, if the incarcerated population is being counted, or if “facility business...can only be carried out while people are locked in.” That provision is now suspended.
The executive order also takes away incarcerated people’s ability to use a facility’s law library and allows for detainees to again be chained to desks as a form of restraint, a practice that only recently was banned.
The passage of the executive order does not impact the 14 hours out of cell requirement for people in general population housing, according to the mayor’s office.
The order also ratchets up the city’s response to correctional officers who feign sickness or go AWOL.
“Any DOC correction officer or supervising officer who is confined to their residence on account of reporting sick, and who is deemed in violation of their permitted “out-of-residence” hours, or is determined by DOC to have otherwise abused the Department’s sick leave policy, shall be suspended for up to thirty days without pay pending hearing and determination of disciplinary charges,” the order reads.
The passage of the executive order drew condemnation from the Board of Correction and its chair, who called the executive order “deeply troubling.”
“While we understand that the Department of Correction is grappling with many challenges in the jails, ending solitary confinement is no less an urgent matter,” said Jennifer Jones Austin, the chair of the BOC. “The Department must immediately provide a clear, public accounting of the status of the plan to permanently discontinue solitary confinement and implement the RMAS model.”
“Specifically, the Department must provide the reasons why each part of the rules cannot be met at this time, a detailed timetable for implementing each part, and a description of the interim processes being undertaken to protect the rights and safety of people in custody, correction officers, and all others who enter our city jails,” Jones Austin added.
Attorneys with The Legal Aid Society called the move “a stain on the City’s human rights record without parallel in this administration.”
“Mayor de Blasio has done a complete about-face by jettisoning the recent advancements New York City had made to curb the reckless use of solitary confinement and dangerous practices of locking people into cells with no supervision or oversight,” said Mary Lynne Werlwas of The Legal Aid Society Prisoners’ Rights Project. “These abuses are even more dangerous in the current environment where correction staff have abandoned their posts and are not even in the jails to provide basic human necessities.”
RMAS, the replacement for solitary confinement that was enacted in June, allows for at least 10 hours of out cell time and allows for incarcerated people to socialize with at least one other person during that time.
Additionally, the new system allows for incarcerated people to have attorneys present during infraction hearings and throughout their punishment. It also lays out a clear path toward getting out of RMAS and back into regular housing, among other changes.
When RMAS first went into effect, Queens Assemblymember Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas called the move “solitary by another name.”
Learning of the suspension of the rules Tuesday, the lawmaker said the executive order was “not the solution” to fixing the issues on Rikers that have led to over a dozen deaths in the past 10 months.
“That’s not the solution – to relax standards and to remove the long fought battles against solitary confinement,” Gonzalez-Rojas said.
The lawmaker said that the mayor should instead look toward the 6A work release program, which only he has the authority to enact, and other decarceration programs for a solution to the jail’s issues.
“Rikers is dysfunctional and out of control, and incarceration is inherently violent,” she said. “Tinkering around the edges is not addressing the root cause...we need to close it once and for all.”
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office defended the decision in a statement to the Eagle.
“At the beginning of this administration, there were about 600 detainees in punitive segregation. Today, there are 68,” said Mitch Schwartz, the mayor’s first deputy press secretary. “This revised timeline, made necessary by staffing shortages, does not change our fundamental mission: ending this practice by the end of this year and forging a safer, more humane justice system.”
