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Solitary may continue for youth at Columbia County prison
Sep 11, 2019 12:55 am
Michael Fitzgerald reports in the New York Daily News that while state leaders agreed recently to largely eliminate solitary confinement, a loophole will allow solitary for juveniles at the Hudson Correctional Facility in Columbia County. New rules bar solitary in adult prisons for pregnant women and individuals with disabilities, and shorten the maximum duration of solitary confinement for all detainees. The rules read, “any person who is housed in an adolescent offender facility” cannot be “placed in segregated confinement.” But while young prisoners can’t be “segregated,” they could still be placed in “disciplinary confinement” in an “adolescent offender separation unit.” Guards could keep juveniles in the “separation union” with as few as “six hours of out-of-cell programming, activities and recreation five days per week, excluding holidays, and at least two hours of recreation on the remaining days." In June the Daily News reported that a federal judge blocked a mentally ill Rockland County teen from being held in solitary, after it was reported that the 17-year-old suffered “irreparable harm” after months of isolation in an 8½-by-10-foot cell at the Hudson Correctional Facility. Read more about this story in the New York Daily News.