Support the Campaign to #HALTsolitary in New York

The #HALTsolitary Campaign Needs Your Help TODAY to End Torture in New York's Prisons and Jails. 

Dear Friends:

We are reaching out to you at a critical moment in the campaign to end solitary confinement in New York, to ask for your support.

As many of you know, solitary confinement--the practice of locking people down in small cells for up to 24 hours a day without meaningful human contact, programming, or therapy--has been proven to cause extreme suffering and psychological and neurological damage. Here is how Sarah, who spent 18 months in solitary, describes her experience:

"In the box I feel like death…After a while I start talking to ants, crickets or any other living or imaginary thing I can think of so I do not totally lose what is left of my mind…This is the damage that happens by throwing people into cages to rot under the pretense that more punishment, isolation, and deprivation will make them change for the better."

Solitary confinement harms not only the incarcerated people who endure it, but also the families and communities to which they will one day return.

In 2021, after years of grassroots organizing and advocacy led by the #HALTsolitary Campaign, supermajorities of both houses of New York's legislature and the Governor enacted the enacted the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Law. Among other provisions, the HALT Solitary Law bans isolation for young people, pregnant women, new mothers, and people with disabilities; bans solitary beyond 15 days for everyone else, and replaces solitary with safe and effective alternative forms of separation involving out-of-cell group programming and activities.

The HALT Solitary Law has saved lives and reduced harm. As a result of its enactment, NY closed a horrific all-solitary prison (Southport C.F.), reduced the use of SHU from thousands of people a day to hundreds of people a day, freed people from solitary who had unconscionably spent years and decades in solitary, and more.

At the same time, New York prisons and jails have been systemically violating the HALT Law since it went into effect in 2022, including by locking people with disabilities in solitary despite the ban, operating alternative units as solitary by another name by failing to provide legally required out-of-cell time, sending people to solitary for prohibited reasons, and more.

We are asking for your support as we push for the HALT Solitary Law to be fully implemented in order to stop torture, save lives, and improve safety for everyone.

Donations in ANY amount are deeply appreciated. And DONATIONS ARE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE through our fiscal sponsor, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), a 501c3 non-profit organization.  Simply click on the DONATE button, or send a check payable to NRCAT, with "NYCAIC" noted in the memo, to National Religious Campaign Against Torture, PO Box 91820, Washington, DC 20090. For more information on donating or on the campaign, contact caicadvocacyday@gmail.com.

OUR NEED FOR FUNDS IS URGENT. Please give today, and please share this request with your family, friends, colleagues, and social media contacts, letting them know why the #HALTsolitary campaign is important to you. 

Thank you for your support.

"I’ve read of the studies done regarding the effects of long-term isolation in solitary confinement, seen how researchers say it can ruin a man’s mind, and I’ve watched with my own eyes the slow descent of sane men into madness—sometimes not so slow. What I’ve never seen the experts write about, though, is what year after year of abject isolation can do to that immaterial part in our middle where hopes survive or die and the spirit resides...

"I’ve experienced times so difficult and felt boredom and loneliness to such a degree that it seemed to be a physical thing inside, so thick it felt like it was choking me, trying to squeeze the sanity from my mind, the spirit from my soul, and the life from my body. I’ve seen and felt hope becoming like a foggy ephemeral thing, hard to get a hold of, even harder to keep a hold of as the years and then decades disappeared while I stayed trapped in the emptiness of the [solitary] world. " 

— William, 30+ years in solitary in New York State prisons