For prisoners suffering from mental illness, solitary confinement is no longer legal in New York.
New York state passed the “SHU bill” on Jan. 15. That’s legislation requiring the Department of Correctional Services to conduct mental health assessments on all inmates in solitary confinement. The law will allow inmates to be removed from segregated housing units—or “SHUs”—if they are suffering from a severe mental illness.
The bill costs $4.5 million in the governor’s proposed budget, which is expected to be voted on by the legislature by April 1.
Alexandra Smith, the coordinator of the advocacy group Mental Health Alternatives for Solitary Confinement, says New York state’s SHU bill is the first legislative bill on solitary confinement for mentally ill inmates in the United States.
“People have been working on this for years—family members and people directly affected,” Smith said. “It’s wonderful to see it come to pass.”
Smith’s role through the Mental Health Alternatives for Solitary Confinement is to monitor how the prison system puts the laws into effect.
The practice of putting the mentally ill in solitary confinement is not rehabilitation, Smith said. “Being put in isolation, not getting contact with others and forced idleness is not a way to rehabilitate people,” she said. “It doesn’t do anything but make people’s disorders more pronounced. In many cases, people just end up deteriorating more.”
Jeff Keller, deputy director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, described the treatment of the mentally ill in solitary confinement as barbaric—especially for those with schizophrenia. Those in solitary confinement spend approximately 23 hours a day alone. That’s enough time to cause serious harm, he says.
“You put someone who is hallucinating and hearing voices into solitary confinement, and you’re forcing them into torture,” he said. Keller’s office worked with the New York legislature to get better treatment for the mentally ill in prisons.
In New York, the new law affects approximately 820 inmates in solitary confinement who are also part of the mental health care system, according to the Department of Correctional Services. That’s approximately 23 percent of prisoners in solitary confinement.
But more than one-half of inmates in solitary confinement suffer from depression and an additional 28 percent who are diagnosed with schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder, according to a survey conducted by The Correctional Association of New York.
Because of the new law, inmates who are found to have a serious mental illness will be placed in mental health treatment units instead of solitary confinement. The new residential areas will provide clinical treatment. The units are scheduled to be built by 2011.
Inmates who are not removed from solitary confinement or placed into special housing will still be offered better mental-health care, including more treatment outside of their cells, according to a New York state press release on the new law.
Jill Daniels, a spokesperson for New York state’s Office of Mental Health, said two ongoing processes have been established to monitor the law’s effect. The Office of Mental Health will give advice to the Depart of Correctional Services on the most appropriate punishment for inmates with serious mental illness to replace solitary confinement, she said.
Staff from the Office of Mental Health and the Department of Correctional Services will work together to identify inmates who can be treated and housed safely in less restrictive settings within the prison, said Daniels.
Mental health services available to all prison inmates are also being expanded, Daniels said.
The new law calls for screening of inmates in solitary confinement to see who is need of specific care to begin by July 1.
(Melissa Daniels is a junior newspaper journalism major.)
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