City Council progressives are moving to ban solitary confinement at Rikers and other city jails — guaranteeing more violence, chaos and suffering.
Worse, the move has supermajority backing, so would likely survive a mayoral veto.
The council hearing on the issue (and rallies around it) invoked all the usual claims that solitary is purely a form of torture, part of a system “designed to kill” (per woke socialist Councilmember Tiffany Cabán).
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who lives on a secured army base in Brooklyn and travels with a taxpayer-provided security detail, insisted that solitary “can ruin people’s lives.”
And, as usual, any testimony to the contrary was ignored. Keisha Williams, a corrections officer who suffered at the hands of violent inmates, asked advocates of the move: “Who are you truly protecting?”
Indeed. Violence has been endemic at Rikers for years: in 2022 so far, there have been some 1,148 assaults on jail staff. That’s driving a wave of corrections officer retirement: more than 3,500 have left the job since 2019, for a 35% drop in headcount that’s run far ahead of the 27% decline in detainee population.
Yes, solitary can be abused. But all government powers can be; that doesn’t mean they should be banned. Except, it seems, to progressives, who want to to scrap jails (and cops!) entirely.
It’s not just jail staff at risk: Other detainees will be victimized as much or more if there’s no way to control violent inmates. As Correction Commissioner Louis Molina put it, the bill “would make it impossible for the department to impose any sanction or measure of accountability” for attacks on “incarcerated individual[s] or against our staff.”
Reform the use of solitary as part of a much-needed overhaul of Rikers. Don’t ban it, and expose DOC staffers and inmates alike to even more danger than they already face.
