FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 21, 2025
CONTACT: Rev. T.C. Morrow,
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and 202-547-1920
People of Faith Denounce Suspension of HALT Solitary Confinement Law Measures in New York
NEW YORK - Yesterday the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Commissioner Daniel Martuscello III issued a memorandum outlining an indefinite suspension of unspecified provisions of the HALT Solitary Confinement law, as the state attempted to respond to a corrections officers strike that has left incarcerated people with limited or no access to food, medicine, medical care, programs, or visits.
Rev. Ron Stief, Executive Director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, said:
“We call on the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to immediately rescind the suspension of restrictions on the use of solitary confinement. Isolating people in conditions of torture as a “solution” to the current strike by corrections officers is both poor management and immoral. The HALT Solitary Confinement Act was signed into law in 2021, following supermajority support of the legislation in both the Senate and Assembly. Gov. Kathy Hochul praised the legislation when it was signed into law.
Faith communities have devoted more than a decade of our energies and resources to supporting the passage and implementation of the ‘HALT law’ because long-term solitary confinement and the denial of meaningful human contact is immoral. It violates the most basic tenets of our religious values of community and restorative justice. In isolated conditions, changes in brain chemistry have been noted within one week. Solitary beyond 15 days is considered a form of torture by the United Nations and yet, on any given day approximately 2,000 incarcerated individuals in NY alone were facing such conditions for months, years even decades before this law took effect. Now, that number has been down to the hundreds, although many others continue to illegally be subjected to solitary by another name. Though the HALT law has not been fully implemented statewide, history will show that when it is fully implemented, the net result will be a safer working facility for staff, a safer facility for incarcerated people, and safer communities to which incarcerated people will one day return.
The torture of long-term solitary confinement demeans all involved, including society at large. Suspending the HALT Act does nothing to make our prisons or our communities safer.”
The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) is a membership organization committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Since its formation in January 2006, more than 300 religious organizations have joined NRCAT, including representatives from the Catholic, evangelical Christian, mainline Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Quaker, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Baha’i, Buddhist, and Sikh communities. Members include national denominations and faith groups, regional organizations and local congregations.
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