The Legal Aid Society, Disability Rights Advocates, and Winston & Strawn LLP today secured a court ruling to compel the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) to make clear which provisions of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act (HALT) they have suspended as a result of illegal strikes by correction staff at prisons across New York State.

Under HALT, prison and jail officials are prohibited from using solitary confinement to punish people with disabilities. HALT’s protections are grounded in the broad scientific consensus that individuals with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to the disastrous and frequently irreversible medical and psychological consequences wrought by solitary confinement, and the growing penological consensus that solitary makes prisons less safe. Correction officers’ unions have fought unsuccessfully against HALT since its inception.

“HALT is the law in New York and DOCCS has no authority to suspend it,” said Antony Gemmell, Supervising Attorney for Legal Aid’s Prisoners’ Rights Project. “The legislature enacted HALT because of profound harms that solitary confinement, a form of torture, has inflicted on generations of New Yorkers.”

“By announcing a vaguely defined ‘suspension’ of HALT, DOCCS opens the door to a potentially boundless circumvention of the legislature’s express will,” he continued. “Our clients, who depend on HALT’s protections, deserve answers about what DOCCS is doing here. We’re glad the Court agrees.”