City Council move to ban solitary would be a disaster for officers and inmates

Mayor Eric Adams
toured jail amenities on Rikers Island final June.
Michael Appleton/Mayoral Pictures Workplace

Metropolis Council progressives are shifting to ban solitary confinement at Rikers and different metropolis jails — guaranteeing extra violence, chaos and struggling.

Worse, the transfer has supermajority backing, so would possible survive a mayoral veto. 

The council listening to on the problem (and rallies round it) invoked all the standard claims that solitary is purely a type of torture, a part of a system “designed to kill” (per woke socialist Councilmember Tiffany Cabán).

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who lives on a secured military base in Brooklyn and travels with a taxpayer-provided safety element, insisted that solitary “can break individuals’s lives.” 

And, as normal, any testimony on the contrary was ignored. Keisha Williams, a corrections officer who suffered by the hands of violent inmates, requested advocates of the transfer: “Who're you actually defending?” 

Certainly. Violence has been endemic at Rikers for years: in 2022 to date, there have been some 1,148 assaults on jail workers.That’s driving a wave of corrections officer retirement: greater than 3,500 have left the job since 2019, for a 35% drop in headcount that’s run far forward of the 27% decline in detainee inhabitants. 

Individuals maintain up images of people who've died at Rikers Island throughout a Metropolis Council listening to on Intro 549 at Metropolis Corridor on September 28.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Photographs

Sure, solitary could be abused. However all authorities powers could be; that doesn’t imply they need to be banned. Besides, it appears, to progressives, who need to to scrap jails (and cops!) solely. 

It’s not simply jail workers in danger: Different detainees will probably be victimized as a lot or extra if there’s no option to management violent inmates. As Correction Commissioner Louis Molina put it, the invoice “would make it inconceivable for the division to impose any sanction or measure of accountability” for assaults on “incarcerated particular person[s] or in opposition to our workers.”

Reform the usage of solitary as a part of a much-needed overhaul of Rikers. Don’t ban it, and expose DOC staffers and inmates alike to much more hazard than they already face.