New York State Prisons

New York State Passes the Nation's Strongest Anti-Solitary Legislation

Veronica Riccobene
new york halt

This article was published in partnership with The Appeal. Andrew Cuomo is at the weakest point of his nearly four-decade political career. Through a month of simultaneous scandals—including an alleged cover-up of COVID-19 nursing home deaths and numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assault of younger female aides—the New York governor has fallen from pandemic darling and 2024 presidential hopeful to an outcast within his own […]

New York Supermax

Victoria Law
Southport Correctional Facility

Imagine row after row of cell doors that rarely open and row after row of people trapped behind those doors, in small cells, day after day. Imagine having to hold most of your conversations by shouting through your cell door at voices whose faces you cannot see; imagine trying to sleep as a cacophony of […]

Voices from Solitary: Solitary Is a Living Death

Voices from Solitary
Clinton-Correctional-Facility cells

The Correctional Association of New York recently released Voices from Clinton, a report detailing the abuse and isolation many of the incarcerated people at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, face. (See accompanying post.)  The report follows how punishments and brutality at an already notoriously violent prison have become worse since an escape made by […]

Widespread Brutality and Solitary Confinement Followed New York Prison Escape, Report Finds

Julia Hettiger
Clinton Escaped Prisoners Banner 7Days

One year after the high-profile escape of two men from Clinton Correctional Facility, the Correctional Association of New York, the state’s oldest prison reform organization, has released a scathing new report on the brutality that followed the escape. Voices from Clinton, documents cruelty often rising to the level of torture, and its subsequent cover up, in […]

How the New Settlement Will—and Will Not—Change Solitary Confinement in New York’s Prisons (Redux)

Jean Casella
100_3878

Last Thursday, a federal judge gave formal approval to the settlement in a class-action suit brought by thousands of people held in solitary confinement in New York’s prisons, represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The ruling codifies an agreement reached in December, after extended negotiations, between the plaintiffs and the New York State […]