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Lawsuit against DOCCS alleges they are violating HALT law

Apr 10, 2023 12:56 am

Chris Gelardi reports at New York Focus that the New York Civil Liberties Union, Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, and Rutgers Law School’s Constitutional Rights Clinic filed a class action lawsuit against the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision on April 5, because prison officials are still putting inmates in solitary confinement even after legislators largely outlawed the practice. Several recent media reports back up the allegations that the prison agency has been sending people to prolonged solitary confinement on illegal terms. The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act was enacted in March 2022. Karen Murtagh, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services, said in a statement that, “This litigation seeks one thing and one thing only.... Enactment of the HALT law as written.” The story says, "A New York Focus analysis in October found that over six months, state prisons sent people to prolonged isolation almost 1,200 times — nearly one in five solitary sentences — for infractions that definitively did not fit within those parameters" of the HALT law. Read more about this story at New York Focus.