New Jersey prison guards’ union endorses bid to roll back solitary confinement limits

Adam Rhodes

Sep 15, 2026

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A union of prison guards in New Jersey is throwing its weight behind efforts to roll back the state’s solitary confinement restrictions, continuing a decadelong trend of law enforcement unions opposing limits on how incarcerated people are allowed to be isolated and for how long. 

A draft version of the legislation provided to Prism, sponsored by Democrat state Sen. and Assistant Majority Leader Linda Greenstein, would amend state law to allow officers to place vulnerable incarcerated people in “isolated confinement,” including without their consent. Currently, incarcerated people who fall into a “vulnerable” category cannot be placed in isolation. 

On social media, the New Jersey Policemen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) Local 105 urged legislators to pass the bill and has repeatedly called for the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act (ICRA) to be repealed.

Passed in 2019, the ICRA was touted at the time as a landmark set of limits on isolated confinement. The law barred officials from holding someone in a cell for 20 or more hours each day with “severely restricted activity, movement and social interaction.” 

The law still gives officials broad discretion over when to use isolation, including for protective custody. When isolation is used, the ICRA caps the length at no more than 20 consecutive days or 30 days in a 60-day period, though some news and watchdog reports have found that officials routinely exceed those limits. 

Greenstein did not respond to requests for comment or questions about how the draft legislation differs, if at all, from the final version of the bill, which has not yet been posted on the state legislature’s website. According to the draft obtained by Prism, the proposed law would also create a definition of a “repetitively violent inmate” who would not be subject to any restrictions in placing them in solitary confinement or for how long. 

Cynthia Totten, a deputy executive director at Just Detention International, which works to prevent sexual abuse behind bars, raised particular concern about the “repetitively violent” designation that would allow corrections officials to isolate anyone with impunity. 

“Especially for people with mental health issues and psychiatric diagnoses as well, it can be very easy to put someone into that box of like, ‘oh, you’ve been repetitively violent,’ and it could be because they haven’t received the treatment that they need or the care that they need,” Totten said. “And we know that placing them in solitary is pretty much 99% guaranteed to exacerbate whatever preexisting issues they have.” 

Additionally, for LGBTQIA+ people in particular, Greenstein’s law would mandate a mental health or medical examination, or judicial determination that they are in “imminent danger” of being harassed or abused based on the perception of their sexual orientation or gender identity. 

William Sullivan, president of the PBA Local 105, has said the changes are necessary to protect officers who he claims have little recourse to punish or isolate incarcerated people who are dangerous to themselves, other prisoners, or staff. According to its website, PBA Local 105 represents nearly 6,000 correctional police officers from the state Department of Corrections, Juvenile Justice Commission, and State Parole Board.

“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here,” Sullivan told Prism. “We’re just asking for a couple technical verbiage changes that allows … the department to discipline inmates that constantly reoffend.”

Law enforcement unions like PBA Local 105 have for almost a decade opposed restrictions in solitary confinement. In 2017, a New York union of correctional officers similarly opposed restrictions in solitary confinement that were part of a settlement between the state and the American Civil Liberties Union. 

A Connecticut correctional officers union successfully pushed Gov. Ned Lamont in 2021 to veto a bill that would have mandated incarcerated people at least have six-and-a-half hours a day outside their cells. After vetoing the bill, Lamont issued an executive order that severely curtailed many of the provisions, reducing the mandated time outside of cells to at least four hours a day for those in the general population and just two hours for those in restrictive housing. 

In Rhode Island, a bill that would have similarly mandated out-of-cell time for both the general population and those in restrictive housing was introduced in March but was recently referred for further study. The bill would have also created a restrictive housing oversight committee tasked with monitoring the use of solitary confinement by the state Department of Corrections. 

Previous efforts to restrict the use of solitary confinement in the state also failed in 2022.

Sullivan, of PBA Local 105, argued that prison data and a handful of recent serious injuries suffered by prison guards on the job highlight the need for dramatic reform of the solitary restrictions. 

“We had an officer stabbed in the head and neck … at Northern State Prison, and it was really bad,” Sullivan said. “And this was an inmate who maxed out [on his prison sentence] and was returned for a parole violation.”

But criminal justice advocates call into question efforts to amend the ICRA, especially given the litany of findings from news organizations as well as state and independent prison watchdogs that corrections staff aren’t complying with the law in the first place. 

In October 2023, HuffPost and the Inside/Out Journalism Project reported that more than three years after the ICRA was passed, the prison system’s main alternative to isolated confinement—so-called Restorative Housing Units—was really just solitary by another name. That same month, New Jersey’s state prison watchdog, the Office of the Corrections Ombudsman, published a report that echoed those findings.  

In December 2023, a Bolts investigation found that transgender people incarcerated in the state are routinely isolated for all but a mere hour or two a day, a clear violation of the ICRA. One woman, at the time, had been isolated for nearly a year.

New Jersey Prison Justice Watch, which monitors the use of solitary confinement, further alleged in an October 2024 report that by denying incarcerated people the required four hours out of their cell, the state was not complying with the ICRA. 

“We’re not following the law, and people are still locked down in very inhuman ways that only wreck any chance they have of the sort of rehabilitation, getting ready to return to our communities, the things that are supposed to be happening,” Totten said. 

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor