MHASC Mission Statement

Mental Health Alternatives to Solitary Confinement (MHASC) is a growing coalition of more than sixty organizations and hundreds of concerned citizens, advocates, and mental health professionals working to end the cruel practice of placing people with psychiatric disabilities in solitary confinement.

Prisoners in solitary confinement, known also as keeplock, protective custody, or administrative segregation, spend twenty-three to twenty-four hours a day in barren concrete cells within special housing units, (SHUs, or "the SHU"). Many of these individuals have mental health needs. Despite experiencing the ravages of psychiatric symptoms, such vulnerable prisoners are subjected to sensory deprivation, social isolation, and enforced idleness—conditions that are extremely harmful to anyone’s mental health but devastating and even life threatening for people with psychiatric disabilities.

Currently, the New York State Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) houses nearly five thousand prisoners in solitary confinement. This is 8 percent of the total inmate population, a rate that is four times the national average. By DOCS’s own estimate, 23 percent of these inmates are mental health consumers.

One of the most sinister aspects of solitary confinement in New York State is that there is no upper limit on the amount of time a person can be sentenced to this brutal punishment. During a visit to Wende Correctional Facility, the Correctional Association of New York, an independent monitoring group, encountered an inmate with mental illness who had been sentenced to thirty-five years in solitary confinement. Disturbingly, the average SHU sentence for mentally ill inmates is six times longer than that of inmates generally—38 months compared with 6.4 months.

The grim conditions in SHUs—for both inmates and the correction officers who work in them—have been clearly documented by numerous outside agencies, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Disabilities Advocates, the Legal Aid Society, Prisoners Legal Services, and the Urban Justice Center; by investigative journalists at the New York Times, the Albany-Times Union, the Village Voice, and the Poughkeepsie Journal; and by state agencies, among them the Office of Mental Health (OMH), the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association (the correction officers union), and the New York State Commission of Correction (a oversight agency of DOCS).

In 2006, the New York State legislature passed a bill banning the placement of people with psychiatric disabilities in solitary confinement and creating alternative therapeutic housing areas for these incarcerated individuals. Inexplicably, the legislation was vetoed by former New York governor George E. Pataki. It has now been reintroduced (bills A333/S4870).

In its 100 Hours Campaign, MHASC is pressing for the enactment of this legislation by March 13, 2007.

The Commission of Correction has issued numerous warnings to DOCS and OMH officials about substandard care, staff shortages, inmate neglect, and dangerous conditions, all of which contribute to the high number of inmate suicides in lockdown units. Between 1998 and 2001, more than 50 percent of the forty-eight suicides in the state prison system occurred in solitary confinement, although inmates in these units make up less than 10 percent of the prison population.

In its investigative report on the death of Harry Figueroa at Auburn Correctional Facility in 2001, the Commission of Correction found that the forty-five-year-old man had died of starvation (officially noted as “decreased intake of food and water”) following a hunger strike. The inmate had a history of psychiatric illness. He died while on suicide watch. The commission stated that security and mental health staff should be disciplined for “service inadequacies,” noting that “no vital signs or weights were ever taken.” Attorneys at Prisoners Legal Services, who have successfully challenged conditions in several SHUs, report a staggering fact: The commission’s recommendations often go unheeded because no outside entity holds DOCS or OMH accountable for implementing them. The commission itself does not enforce its recommendations.

It is shocking to learn that there are horrific human rights abuses happening in our own back yard, paid for with our own tax dollars. We hope that everyone who cares about human rights in New York will join this effort, and that the legislature will end the torture of people with psychiatric disabilities in New York prisons.

—Steven Fernandez, a member of MHASC

I have trouble putting into words my experience with my godson during visits when he was in the SHU. There is no way to express the misery and suffering produced by SHU confinement. I equate it with visiting a prisoner of war. For the first month I could not control my tears.

—Leah Gitter, a family member of a prisoner
with a psychiatric disability

A growing body of research confirms the harmful psychological effects of isolation. Numerous court decisions in recent years have concurred with these research findings. “The record shows, what anyway seems pretty obvious, that isolating a human being from other human beings year after year or even month after month can cause substantial psychological damage, even if the isolation is not total,” wrote the judge in Davenport v. DeRobertis, a case involving SHU conditions in Illinois prisons.

Mentally, I think I’ve lost it. Physically, I feel broken at times. I’ve become a savage.

—An inmate sentenced to ten years
in solitary confinement

Sometimes I forget the simplest things and I am always feeling unloved and lost and lonely and no one can understand.

—A thirty-two-year-old prisoner at Clinton Correctional Facility who has been in solitary confinement for more than two years and has twice attempted suicide

In May 2002, Disabilities Advocates, the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners Rights Project, and Prisoners Legal Services teamed up with the Manhattan law firm Davis Polk and Wardwell in a major lawsuit against DOCS and OMH, claiming inadequate mental health treatment in state prisons. Years of costly litigation could be avoided if state policymakers acted now to support S333/A4870. It is clear that in the absence of litigation or legislation, neither DOCS nor OMH will act to end the severe abuse of human rights endured by people with psychiatric disabilties in New York State prisons.

For more information about MHASC or to join, contact

Alexandra Smith
Urban Justice Center
123 Williams Street, 16th floor
(646) 602-5683
ASmith@urbanjustice.org