NYC's mayor is blocking a law that bans solitary confinement in jails. Critics say he's being "irrational."
NEW YORK -- Protesters outside New York City Hall on Monday urged the mayor to rescind an emergency order and allow a law ending solitary confinement in city jails to take full effect.
Over the weekend, Mayor Eric Adams issued an order that stopped the Department of Correction from implementing parts of Local Law 42, mainly the limits on how long prisoners can be isolated for and restrained while being transported.
In addition to limiting isolation of inmates to four hours per day, Local Law 42 requires correction officers to check on them every 15 minutes and write detailed reports explaining why isolation was necessary to begin with.
Woman says son had "paranoid delusions"
Arlene Normyle's son spent years in solitary confinement. He's been imprisoned in upstate New York since 1977.
"He tells me the conditions. He tells me the reality," said Normyle. "Absent interaction, four walls close in, paranoid delusions, decompensation begins."
Normyle was one of more than a dozen advocates demanding the mayor let the law take effect, as it was scheduled to Sunday.
"The weekend, is a mayor abusing his ability to call a state of emergency because he wants to stop a law that he just does not like," said New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
Ban at NYC jails delayed amid controversy
Controversy surrounding Local Law 42 started in January, when it overwhelmingly passed the City Council. Adams vetoed the bill, then the council overrode it.
"We just want to just have time to analyze the law and decide the proper way to implement it without bringing harm to the inmates and bringing harm to the correction officers," the mayor said after issuing the emergency order.
Adams argued the law, which was meant to make city jails safer, doesn't allow adult inmates to be restrained when being taken to and from jail.
"There is nothing in this bill that says you cannot use restraints," Williams said.
Critics blast mayor's emergency order as "irrational"
In a statement responding to the mayor's emergency order, the Legal Aid Society said:
This manufactured 'emergency' is an overreach by Mayor Adams. It is irrational to claim that the prospect of implementing a law enacted months ago has caused a state of emergency. These executive orders set a dangerous precedent where the Mayor can avoid implementing laws that he disagrees with simply by claiming they would adversely affect public safety.
Instead of issuing emergency orders a day before the ban was scheduled to go into effect, Mayor Adams should be doing everything possible to end the inhumane isolation of incarcerated New Yorkers, stop the rampant brutality in the jails, and reduce the jail population.
The New York Civil Liberties Union also condemned the delay, calling it "another abuse of power by his administration."
"New Yorkers have made it crystal clear they reject the deadly use of solitary confinement in our city jails, including when their council members took the rare step to override the mayor's veto of the legislation," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. "Contrary to what the mayor claims, solitary confinement does not make jails and prisons safer. It just causes more pain and suffering in facilities that are already traumatizing."
Adams said the order is temporary and he expects his team's review of the law to wrap up by October.
