Disability rights groups and legal organizations have filed a class action lawsuit against the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) and the New York State Office of Mental Health for illegally subjecting disabled people to solitary confinement. Disability Rights Advocates, The Legal Aid Society, and the law firm Winston & Strawn LLP filed the motion on behalf of people with disabilities who are incarcerated in facilities across New York. The groups accuse prisons across the state of ongoing violations of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act (HALT).

HALT, which went into effect on March 31, 2022, was designed by advocates to drastically reduce the use of solitary confinement in prisons and jails in New York State. It’s meant to limit the amount of time spent in isolation to 15 days maximum—and to completely eliminate the use of it against disabled people and other “special populations” that are most vulnerable. Before HALT, prisons held thousands of people in solitary confinement with unchecked power, sometimes even for decades. Many of those held were disabled people. 

Solitary confinement is defined as being locked up alone in an extremely small space for long periods of time without meaningful rehabilitative programs or treatment. Those placed in solitary confinement are denied visitation rights and can’t make phone calls, receive mail, or speak to anyone else. The inhumane conditions of solitary confinement have proved to severely impact incarcerated people physically, mentally, and emotionally. 

Solitary confinement also increases the likelihood that incarceration will end fatally. Suicide rates are significantly higher for people who have been placed in solitary, even after being released. Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia now have statutes that limit or prohibit solitary confinement on paper, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. With HALT, New York’s large prison system has the opportunity to set a precedent regarding more humane treatment of incarcerated people as a whole. 

Recent studies show that about two-thirds of incarcerated people are disabled, an alarmingly high prevalence. Because those placed in isolation are most often denied medical care and resources, the effects of solitary confinement on disabled people are even more severe. In addition to its effects on mental health, solitary confinement can also lead to chronic headaches, eyesight deterioration, digestive problems, hypersensitivity to smells and noises, sleep problems, and more. 

Plaintiffs in the case include Maurice Anthony, a 42-year-old Black man who has been incarcerated since 2014 and is legally blind, along with Andy Gneco, a 39-year-old Black and Latinx man who has hearing and mental health disabilities and has been imprisoned since 2019. 

Though Anthony is supposed to receive accommodations for his disability, DOCCS has subjected him to solitary for nearly two years, often confining him to his cell for up to 23 hours per day. HALT defines solitary confinement as “any form of cell confinement … for more than 17 hours a day.” However, prisons have continued to skirt the law for years by using alternative language to justify keeping disabled people isolated—or letting them out for the minimum hours required to remain within compliance while still keeping them isolated and depriving them of any recreation, resources, or programming—according to Joshua Rosenthal, a supervising attorney at Disability Rights Advocates. 

According to the complaint, Anthony “compared solitary confinement to being caught ‘in a trunk’ or a ‘casket’ where ‘you can’t get out.’” These conditions have caused him to experience claustrophobia, extreme frustration, feelings of hopelessness, and even blackouts. Gneco, too, has experienced similar, with the forced isolation worsening his depression and anxiety. 

While some enter prison already disabled, many become disabled in prison because of solitary confinement or other torturous conditions and experiences, including prison fights, physical abuse from officers, lack of nutrition, being denied bathroom access, and more. The poor conditions have only been exacerbated by prisons allowing COVID-19 to go mostly unchecked in facilities since 2020. 

Another plaintiff, Stephanie Peña, a 23-year-old Black and Latinx woman who has been incarcerated by DOCCS since 2022, experiences post-traumatic stress disorder, among other disabilities. She has shared that solitary confinement is “destroying” her and has greatly increased her mental and emotional distress. The complaint details that she lives in constant fear of any misstep or perceived disobedience that might further result in the harsh conditions of isolation. 

Solitary confinement is used as punishment, often as a form of retaliation for incarcerated people attempting to assert their rights. Jose Vega, a formerly incarcerated man from New York who is disabled and in a wheelchair, affirmed that corrections officers often abuse their power by writing tickets to solitary confinement for disabled people who simply ask for the accommodations they need. 

When he first got to prison, Vega said they took away his specialized wheelchair and gave him a standard one. When he was placed in solitary confinement, they deprived him of necessary medical resources, including catheters. 

“They pick on the most vulnerable to make an example of you, to show others, ‘This could be you,’” Vega said. 

After suing DOCCS in 1997, Vega was able to evade being placed in confinement again for the duration of his more than 23 years in prison—only because he gained support from the public and DOCCS was scared of the optics, he shared. 

DOCCS has already been sued several times in recent years for discrimination against disabled people. These cases have included denying pain medication to people with more severe chronic health conditions, denying paraplegic people like Vega their catheters, and excluding disabled people from rehabilitative programming. 

The new class action suit will represent hundreds of disabled people who have likely been held in solitary confinement that have not been reported, Rosenthal said. According to the motion for class certification, DOCCS’ own data shows that it holds dozens of people with disabilities in special housing units (SHU) in any given month. Yet because data do not reflect people with certain mental health needs and lower-level medical needs who have a disability as defined under HALT, the true number of people with disabilities being held by DOCCS in torturous conditions is not known and almost certainly higher than what’s reported. 

Victor Pate, co-director of the HALT Solitary Campaign, was one of the leaders in getting HALT passed and has continued using his own experiences with incarceration and solitary confinement to push for systemic change. Now, he’s on the frontlines advocating for HALT to be implemented correctly through educating legislators and the public and implementing public pressure campaigns with the HALT Solitary Campaign. 

“They are in violation of every component of the bill … We are pushing for full compliance with the law as the language states,” Pate said. “DOCCS should be held accountable.”

Pate, who has been out of prison for 25 years, shared that he has only seen the treatment of incarcerated people get worse despite consistent reforms. Within the last two years since HALT passed, Pate has heard from many incarcerated people that DOCCS does not give people the legally required out-of-cell time, and in addition, officers are shackling people to chairs and implementing worse forms of punishment. All the while, residential rehabilitation units, which were meant to be alternative spaces for disabled people to get care, have turned into another form of solitary, further keeping disabled people away from the general population and depriving them of socialization, programming, and resources. 

“You’re sending people out worse than when they came in,” Pate said. “How long [is DOCCS] going to be allowed to cause harm to the people that they are supposed to be responsible for making better, assisting, preparing them to hopefully come back to the community?” 

Pate is concerned that conditions in prisons now are as bad as they were prior to the Attica Prison Riot, and that if they continue, more uprisings are inevitable. 

“We are living in a lopsided society where you and I are held to certain standards of accountability that those in these positions [running prisons] are not,” Pate said. The Justice Center, which is supposed to be responsible for monitoring prisons’ compliance with HALT, has barely been doing so, according to Pate. “I’ve talked to people who have been incarcerated and still experiencing solitary confinement, and from their experiences, it seems like DOCCS is doing whatever they want to do, almost like HALT never passed.”