The Legal Aid Society called out the new disciplinary confinement policies adopted yesterday by the NYC Board of Corrections as a woefully insufficient remedy for practices that continue to create conditions that have led people to a lifetime of trauma and even death, as reported by the Daily Mail.

Critics say the model that will replace punitive segregation – called the Risk Management Accountability System (RMAS) – amounts to a superficial reshuffling of existing practices that maintain fundamentally punitive features of the previous policy.

The rules, for instance, provide no limit on how long an incarcerated person may be sentenced to RMAS; the rules governing its use give the Department permission to extend a sentence forever, without ever disclosing the secret information that purportedly justifies this deprivation.

The Legal Aid Society, which defends New Yorkers accused of crimes, was also critical, calling it a “re-branding” that “replicates some of the most inhumane features of the current system.”