FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 6, 2013
Contact: Samantha Friedman, Rabinowitz/Dorf Communications, (202) 265-3000 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
NRCAT Joins Groups Asking U.N. to Investigate Solitary Confinement in N.Y. Prisons
Washington, D.C. – The National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a vocal opponent of the controversial and frequent use of prolonged solitary confinement in prisons across the United States, joined more than three dozen representatives from human rights, civil rights, mental health and faith-based organizations, in submitting a letter to the United Nations this week, requesting an investigation into the use of solitary confinement in New York state prisons.
On behalf of NRCAT, Rev. Richard Killmer, NRCAT’s executive director, signed the letter, spearheaded by the New York Civil Liberties Union and addressed to U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez. The letter alleges that New York’s use of solitary confinement is inhumane, unsafe and arbitrary, and that it infringes upon fundamental human rights protections, including “the right to be protected from torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
“Prolonged isolation violates individuals’ God-given dignity and worth,” Killmer said. “The diverse faith traditions that comprise the National Religious Campaign Against Torture recognize the inherent dignity of every human being, a quality that does not disappear behind prison gates.”
NRCAT’s director of U.S. prisons policy and program, Laura Markle Downton, added, “In a 2011 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, called 15 days or more of solitary confinement ‘prolonged solitary confinement,’ noting that some of the psychological effects caused by isolation become irreversible at that point. Some prisoners have been held for months, years, even decades, in isolated conditions and have experienced long-term mental harm as a result. Our faith partners in the state of New York urge the U.N. to fully investigate the use of solitary confinement in New York and issue a recommendation to halt its abuse.”
According to the NYCLU, from 2007 to 2011, New York issued more than 68,000 sentences to extreme isolation as punishment for violating prison rules. Only 16 percent of isolation sentences over that period involved violence or weapons. On any given day, approximately 4,500 people – about 8 percent of the entire New York State prison population – are locked down for 23 hours a day in isolation cells. In October, the NYCLU released Boxed In: The True Cost of Extreme Isolation in New York’s Prisons, an investigative report on New York prison officials’ use of solitary confinement as a disciplinary tool of first resort.
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