A highly-anticipated report issued Friday by Steve J. Martin said a yet-to-be-implemented city law banning solitary confinement would “only exacerbate the current dangerous conditions” on Rikers Island.
Martin was appointed as a monitor by a judge to track violence and oversee conditions on Rikers as part of the ongoing detainee rights case, Nunez v. the City of New York.
Local Law 42, he went on, is not a “viable” tool to separate those who commit violence behind bars from other detainees or staff.
As such, Martin said the law — which has been a major point of contention between the City Council that passed it and the mayor who has refused to implement it — should be put on hold, at least for the time being.
“The monitoring team has grave concerns about the implementation of certain problematic sections of [Local Law 42],” Martin said in his report.
“To the extent that the monitor is required to approve or direct certain [Department of Correction] practices that include the problematic components of [Local Law 42], the monitor will not approve or direct such practices absent modifications to those requirements,” he added.
The 341-page report, which was months in the making, serves as a blow to the City Council, which first fought for years to pass the legislation and has since had to fight to get it implemented in the city’s jails. In turn, the report serves as a boost to Mayor Eric Adams, whose administration has refused to put the law into practice.
The bill, passed in the final moments of the Council’s 2023 legislative session, was vetoed by Adams in January 2024. Several weeks later, the Council voted to override the veto, putting the bill on track for its July 28 implementation date.
However, as the deadline for the law to take effect drew closer, Adams’ attempts to skirt the law began to come into view.
The mayor and his Department of Correction commissioner, Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, asked federal Judge Laura Swain in June to assess whether or not the law would force the DOC to violate any court orders in the Nunez case. The request was the first sign that Adams may have been searching for a legal avenue to get around the ban on solitary — a correctional practice that has been deemed torture by the U.N., but one the mayor, the DOC commissioner and correction officers claim they haven’t used in years.
Then, on the eve of the law’s implementation, Adams passed an executive order that declared a state of emergency in the city’s jails and suspended the ban on solitary confinement.
“There were some parts of it that were extremely dangerous to the inmates,” Adams said at the time. “The goal is we want to make sure the spirit of the law does not get in the way of the implementation of the law.”
Under the law, incarcerated individuals who commit a violation behind bars would be prevented from being held in an isolated cell for more than two hours per day within a 24-hour period and for more than eight hours at night directly after an alleged offense occurred — the confinement would be referred to as a “de-escalation” period. Should corrections officials determine that further confinement is required to de-escalate a situation, an incarcerated person could be held for up to four hours total in a 24-hour period.
The law would also allow for people in custody being placed in restrictive housing to have a hearing on whether or not their placement in restrictive housing is necessary. During that hearing, they would be allowed to be represented by an advocate, be it a lawyer, law student, paralegal or another incarcerated person.
Local Law 42 also requires that people in restrictive housing are given access to at least 14 hours of out-of-cell time per day. That time is supposed to be filled with programming and activities, according to the law.
The law also includes several other provisions, including a rule requiring the DOC to provide a detainee in a de-escalation period with a communication device and a prohibition on enhanced restraints on detainees under the age of 22.
The monitor appeared to agree with the mayor’s opposition to the bill in the report issued on Friday.
Martin said he took issue with at least a half dozen components of the law, including how it defines solitary confinement. The monitor claimed that the City Council’s definition of the practice “goes well beyond” that of the standard definitions of solitary, which typically includes one to four hours of out-of-cell time for detainees.
The monitor also raised concerns about the “global approach” of the law, which he claimed wouldn’t allow DOC officials to make decisions about whether or not to let a detainee back into general housing on a case-by-case basis.
“While [Local Law 42] works to eliminate solitary confinement and, theoretically, permits restrictive housing, in practice, the law does not permit the department the necessary discretion to develop a viable restrictive housing model,” Martin said in his report.
The monitor’s assessment of the solitary confinement ban comes as Swain considers stripping the city of its control of Rikers Island and handing it to a court-appointed authority known as a receiver.
In November, Swain found the city in contempt of 18 of the court orders outlined in the decade-old Nunez case and ordered the city to meet with the monitor, federal prosecutors and the Legal Aid Society, which represents a class of Rikers detainees in the case, to discuss what a receiver would look like.
While the Legal Aid Society and prosecutors with the Justice Department told Swain last month that they believe a receiver should be someone from outside the department, the city took a different approach, proposing that Swain appoint the DOC’s current commissioner to serve in the role.
Swain, who said she was “inclined” to appoint a receiver in light of the city’s inability to make the jails safer over the past decade, is expected to rule on receivership in the coming weeks or months.
Martin said in his Friday report that whatever comes of Local Law 42 shouldn’t be decided until Swain makes her ruling.
In the meantime, a judge in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan is currently considering whether Adams violated the law by issuing an executive order to suspend the implementation of the solitary confinement ban. The City Council sued the mayor over the order in December.
In a statement to the Eagle on Monday, a City Council spokesperson said that they’d continue pushing for the law’s implementation in court despite the monitor’s report. The spokesperson also questioned the monitor’s assessment of the law.
“Given the rate of violence on Rikers is worse now than when the monitorship began over a decade ago, it’s clear that more effective oversight and solutions are needed to improve conditions for people in custody and staff alike,” the spokesperson said.
