Photo: Bebeto Matthews/AP
In 2015, after spending two years in isolation on Rikers Island without a trial, Kalief Browder took his own life. His family blamed Browder’s stay in solitary confinement, which they said left him a broken man. His death at age 22 renewed calls to end solitary confinement and, eight years later on Wednesday, the City Council voted to ban the practice in city jails. The move has received praise from advocates of criminal justice reform who say solitary confinement is a form of torture, but Mayor Eric Adams and corrections officers say it’s a necessary form of punishment to keep guards safe. Adams, a former NYPD officer himself, hasn’t ruled out the possibility of vetoing the bill when it reaches his desk.
Carlina Rivera, the chair of the council’s Criminal Justice committee, is one of the 39 members who voted to ban the practice, and she spoke a day later about what she thinks is missing from the conversation about solitary confinement and whether the council would override a potential mayoral veto.
Before we get to the vote itself, can you tell me a little bit about the journey to get to this moment? How did this bill come to be?
There were some really heated moments. I would say one of the most recent ones was when we had a hearing on this bill last fall. We had advocates on the steps of City Hall. We had corrections officers who were opposed. And I was getting phone calls from health-care workers, the union that represents them, on their concerns on the bill itself. And it became this very, very heated exchange between all these stakeholders and would actually be a seven-hour hearing going into the night. It was at that moment where I just thought to myself, We have to get this to the finish line.
We’ve received so much testimony from families who continue to tell their story of loved ones that they’ve lost or of surviving solitary confinement and what it took for them to get back to a place where they finally maybe didn’t completely feel like the person they were when they went in, but that they’re finally on their way to feeling like a person, like a human being. And I think it’s that humanity that really carried this bill across the finish line to what is a historic moment for criminal legal reform and what was a big day for the city.
In your opinion, what do you think is the biggest misconception about solitary confinement? What’s missing from the conversation when people talk about this issue?
So, I think the misconception is that this is somehow eliminating some sort of protection for people when right now it is so violent and so dangerous inside of Rikers itself that whether you’re incarcerated or an officer, you do not feel safe. The piece that people don’t know is that solitary confinement is antiquated. It’s an 18th-century practice that has been used as a disciplinary tool and that, every once in a while, is renamed or retitled as something else, whether that’s segregated housing or punitive segregation. It is essentially a box that people are in where there’s no socialization. There is no sunlight. And it has been recognized by human-rights experts as a form of torture. In fact, the statistics are really troubling as to what happens to a person after they’re released from jail after experiencing solitary confinement and it is all tragic. It’s opioid overdoses, it’s substance abuse, it’s recidivism, it’s suicide. I think that’s the part that sometimes it’s hard for people to want to either read or understand. But those are the facts.
What will it mean for the city when this ban takes effect?
I think we will look at other practices that are happening inside of the jails itself. I feel that criminal legal reform is mentioned consistently in this sort of a larger umbrella. And this piece, ending solitary confinement, it’s something that has been discussed for well over ten years just at the City Council level. And I think what we’re looking at is, finally, a piece of legislation that brought together many, many concerns that would eventually be endorsed by the same health-care workers that had initially opposed it. That you can have a conversation where you center humanity, where you understand that workers and the detained are facing really serious, harrowing conditions and you can come to a solution. I think, for New York City, this is a conversation that brings us back to closing Rikers Island, reducing the population on the island itself, and figuring out how we can continue that just transition to more humane facilities.
Mayor Adams has made it clear that he does not support a ban, saying that ending the use of solitary would make jails unsafe particularly for corrections officers and other detainees. What are your thoughts on that?
We had so many conversations with corrections officers, with workers, with advocates, with public defenders, people that go to the jail almost daily to provide programming, legal representation, families that are visiting. And also those families that have lost someone, that would go to the island to see someone and they have either died in custody or they died soon after.
One thing that I think we tried to make clear was that we all essentially do have the same goal. I think that’s something that we’ve tried to sort of highlight over and over again is that research shows that solitary confinement exacerbates mental illness. It destabilizes people in a way that increases the likelihood of violence, which undoubtedly runs counter to all of our public-safety goals. So, we really tried to just stress that and this is a status quo that we have accepted for all this time where our neighbors are locked away in violent and dangerous conditions. We worked as best we could to negotiate what we thought was a piece of legislation that was important, that was a long time in the making, and we feel good about where we landed ultimately.
Adams hasn’t said if he will pursue a veto or not, but is the council prepared to override a veto if he goes that route?
Yes. We had 38 sponsors on the bill. We passed the bill with 39 votes. That’s over a vetoproof majority. As we got towards this date in finalizing the bill and passing it into law, we certainly ensured that we talked to individual council members who feel strongly about the bill, that it was the right thing to do, that they were going to vote yes and that we were going to stay strong in case of a veto and override it.
In addition to having the support of the majority of the council, the bill was backed by many members of New York’s congressional delegation. Does it feel like the conversation around prison reform issues is changing?
I think so. I certainly felt like we were getting to a place where the council felt stronger. It felt stronger in terms of our resolve to get this done. This was a priority for the Speaker, and that certainly helped with messaging and momentum. And then to see 11 members of the New York congressional delegation write a letter somewhat unprompted by the City Council, saying this is the right thing to do and we support you, I felt like that was a really big moment. I would say when the letter came out and we had federal support from such a strong showing from Congress, from our members in the House, I felt like we were finally going to get it done. I think this also goes to the national conversation as well. This is happening in other spaces across the country. I feel like New York should be leading the way in this sort of reform, rejecting the status quo. And seeing different levels of support from the state and federal levels? That was a big deal.
There’s been a lot of reports about the state of the city’s jails and how changes aren’t always put into place as they ought to be. There’s been evidence of past limits on solitary not being honored as they should be. When this ban goes into effect, do you think it’s likely to be enforced?
Enforcement is always your number one concern as a legislator that you’re going to be able to pass a law that can go into practice. I think when we came together and we added prehearing confinement in restrictive housing, when we looked at the care for people during de-escalation and really ensured that it wasn’t just up to medical personnel, that we had to rely on DOC, the Department of Correction officers and staff, we took that careful approach and we were that thoughtful to ensure that we were going to be able to implement this fully. Many times, you do have that fear. But I think the steps that we went through, the lengths, and how explicit we were in conversations and in the actual content of the law itself, I feel confident. As a council, we have a charter-mandated responsibility of oversight and investigation, and this will certainly be a topic that we come back to, to ensure that we are holding the city accountable.
Ending solitary is only one of many goals for advocates of prison and criminal justice reform. Looking toward the future, what more needs to be done?
We certainly want to look at better streamlined case processing. That’s one way to reduce unnecessary, even harmful jail time imposed on New Yorkers. We’re looking at how we can do better in just producing people for court. I think the mental-health piece of individuals that are actually in Rikers, who should be there, who shouldn’t be there. That’s a top priority for us. We passed legislation, one of my bills, to create jail-population review teams, and that’s really to review cases with many, many stakeholders. I was just talking to the district attorney about this in terms of our progress.
Right now, we’re at this unprecedented moment in that we have over half of the population at Rikers who have a mental-health issue and then we have a high percentage of that population who have serious mental illness and have been diagnosed. And those individuals are languishing in general. You have people spending over 100 days in Rikers because they’re not getting to court. Their cases aren’t getting processed and, because of some of their medical conditions, they’re just not receiving the services that they need. So that’s all kind of coming to a head and those are going to be a focus of ours. Also, I would say personnel management. I think we’ve seen the federal monitor issue report after report going as far to say that there have been alleged cover-ups in many different departments and on many different issues. So we’re going to be looking at that as well, this culture of mismanagement and dysfunction.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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