Decarceration advocates are persevering with to hunt options towards the state’s jail situations in lieu of laws and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s reluctance to make use of her clemency powers towards at the moment incarcerated people this 12 months.
Earlier this month, the Humane Options to Lengthy-Time period Solitary Confinement (HALT) Solitary marketing campaign petitioned the United Nations to research the state’s jail system for failing to completely implement the HALT legal guidelines, which considerably prohibit solitary confinement practices.
“New York State, New York Metropolis, and different localities throughout New York State are participating in egregious practices that violate their very own home legal guidelines, in addition to worldwide human rights regulation, together with via their use of solitary confinement, employees brutality towards incarcerated folks, excessive lengths of incarceration, and dying by incarceration,” they wrote. “Whereas New York’s prisons and jails have at all times been websites of racism, brutality, and torture, the present second presents a very acute disaster the place state and native officers are instantly flouting their very own legal guidelines to proceed, cowl up, and distract from their regimes of torture and abuse.”
In 2021, New York State handed the HALT legal guidelines banning extended solitary confinement, quantified by greater than 15 consecutive days in isolation, which is considered torture underneath the U.N.’s Nelson Mandela Guidelines. The laws additionally stops corrections officers from retaining somebody in a cell for greater than 17 hours for 3 consecutive days usually and prevents the apply completely towards folks with disabilities or pregnancies.
On Sept. 29, the Correctional Affiliation of New York (CANY), a nonprofit tasked by the state for DOCCS oversight, launched findings suggesting the usage of Particular Housing Models (SHUs) or Rehabilitative Residential Models (RRUs), two types of disciplinary solitary confinement, was extra prevalent after the HALT legal guidelines handed. Such findings corroborated claims by advocates who lengthy maintained the state by no means absolutely carried out the laws. CANY’s findings additionally discovered that greater than half of the folks positioned in SHUs and RRUs have been Black.
Earlier this 12 months, Division of Corrections and Group Supervision (DOCCS) employees went on strike with calls to droop or abolish the HALT legal guidelines. They blamed the laws for elevated violence towards corrections officers, regardless of advocates saying the ban was by no means correctly carried out. In July, a decide quickly blocked DOCCS from suspending HALT.
In the meantime, lethal violence from employees towards incarcerated people additionally introduced consideration to jail situations. Notably, the killings of Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi led to calls for for extra oversight and past.
Some advocates, together with from the NAACP, consider Gov. Hochul’s constitutional clemency powers can ease the situations by releasing folks, notably these serving out extreme sentences from many years in the past. They gathered on Sept. 30 exterior her Manhattan workplace.
“Governor Hochul, now’s the second to display daring management by using the total energy of your clemency authority,” mentioned NAACP New York State Convention director Chris Alexander. “For too many New Yorkers, justice has been changed by extreme punishment, and their full and whole rehabilitation has been ignored by our state in favor of endlessly warehousing them within the inhumane situations of our prisons.
“We urge you to grant clemencies boldly and instantly to people who’ve proven real transformation, and whose launch would pose no public security threat.”
Up to now in 2025, Hochul has granted clemency to 13 folks. None have been incarcerated on the time. To be clear, clemency doesn’t necessitate innocence. As an alternative, the manager energy factors to mercy and equity. As of final 12 months, greater than 1,000 clemency petitions have been filed to the Governor by incarcerated people searching for a commutation or sentence discount.
“Governor Hochul initiated vital systemic adjustments inside DOCCS to enhance the security and safety of everybody that enters our correctional services, and has carried out reforms to strengthen the clemency program by offering candidates with an up to date web site that features new utility kinds, and by making a panel of specialists to advise on instances underneath overview,” mentioned a spokesperson for Hochul. “The Governor is dedicated to proceed working with the legislature to cut back recidivism, improve reentry providers for beforehand incarcerated people, and enhance the jail system via enhanced recruitment efforts and coverage reforms.”
Moreover, the Governor’s Workplace will overview suggestions made by the HALT committee, a controversial job pressure fashioned following the unlawful jail guard strike earlier this 12 months, to revise the state’s solitary confinement ban. Hochul’s spokesperson says she doesn’t touch upon pending clemency purposes.
Final week, CANY launched one other pair of reviews on current web site visits of Upstate New York’s Gouverneur Correctional Facility and the Finger Lakes area’s Cayuga Correctional Facility. Whereas violence and racial abuse have been decrease than common in Cayuga, respondents incarcerated at Gouverneur reported larger than common verbal, bodily, sexual, and racial abuse, and lots of mentioned they didn’t file grievances as a consequence of retaliation issues.
