NY Correction Officers Union Lashes Out Against Proposed Solitary Confinement Reform

By: Denis Cyr

Correction union leaders are vehemently against a new proposal that would ban or limit solitary confinement in city jails, NY Post reported.

The union claims this move will endanger workers and other inmates; however, some psychiatrists believe the practice does more harm than good.

Metzner, Jeffrey L.& Fellner, Jami concluded that for those inmates who enter the prison already diagnosed with a mental illness, the punishment of solitary confinement is extremely dangerous in that the inmates are more susceptible to exacerbating the symptoms. Research indicates that the psychological effects of solitary confinement may encompass “anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis.

A main issue with isolating prisoners who are known to have mental illnesses is that it prevents the inmates from ever possibly recovering. Instead, many “mentally ill prisoners decompensate in isolation, requiring crisis care or psychiatric hospitalization.” It is also noted that if a prisoner is restrained from interacting with the individuals, they wish to have contact with they exhibit similar effects.

According to a March 2014 article in American Journal of Public Health, “Inmates in jails and prisons attempt to harm themselves in many ways, resulting in outcomes ranging from trivial to fatal. Solitary confinement has been reported to cause hypertension, headaches and migraines, profuse sweating, dizziness, and heart palpitations. Many inmates also experience extreme weight loss due to digestion complications and abdominal pain, according to an NYU study.

This subject has no easy answers, however.

“As the violence and chaos continues in our city jails, our city public officials are discussing further eliminating punitive segregation, aka the ‘bing’ or solitary confinement,” Joseph Russo, President of the Assistant Deputy Wardens and Deputy Wardens Association, wrote to The Post.

“Since this effort of being kind and considerate to violent criminals and gang members began, it has been clear that it does not work. It has not made us safer, it has not produced any positive results,” Russo wrote.

The NY Post wrote the bill that was introduced in City Council Friday seeking to all but eliminate the controversial tactic.

The city has already begun to curb its use of “punitive segregation,” the practice of isolating misbehaving inmates from the general inmate population, following Mayor de Blasio’s pledge to end it.

The bill introduced Friday by Queens Democratic Councilman Daniel Dromm would limit isolation in a solitary cell to four hours. Current city laws allow inmates to be kept in solitary confinement for up to 20 hours at a time, the Post pointed out