With Albany Close To Solitary Confinement Reforms, Long-Term "Psychological Torture" Continues

Raymond Clyde has spent the past 14 years and seven months in a series of 15 by 20 foot cells in Upstate Correctional Facility, a few miles from the Canadian border in the small town of Malone, New York.

Clyde is allowed two hours every day outside in a small steel and concrete “rec pen” attached to the back of his cell in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) that is opened remotely when an officer pushes a button. After the two hours are up, the officer makes an announcement ordering all of the men back into their cells before closing the doors behind them. The only time he sees another human being is when a correction officer delivers food or mail through a slot. Clyde communicates with men in the adjoining cells by shouting through the air vents.

“It’s a psychological torture,” Clyde told Gothamist. “Being totally isolated like we are, in cells by ourselves with virtually nothing, we go through depression, we go through stress, anxiety, and insomnia.”

For nearly a decade, criminal justice advocates have been lobbying the New York state legislature to curtail solitary confinement by passing the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, which would limit isolation to 15 days.

On Thursday, the State Senate passed the HALT Act, after the Assembly passed the legislation on Tuesday; the bill now waits for the governor's signature. (Governor Andrew Cuomo's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether he would sign it into law.)

Other states have passed legislation to limit time in isolation. In 2017, Colorado limited solitary to 15 consecutive days. In 2019, New Jersey limited it to 20 consecutive days, with a limit of 30 days during any 60-day period. The United Nations has stated that anything over 15 days in isolation is tantamount to torture.

“There are people in New York who’ve been in solitary for fifteen, twenty, even thirty years,” Brooklyn State Senator Julia Salazar, the lead sponsor of the HALT Act, told Gothamist by email. “You can’t put a pretty face on torture. Passing the HALT Solitary Confinement Act is the only way to actually get people out of these deadly conditions. New York continues to lock people in solitary confinement at rates above the national average.”

Last year, instead of passing HALT, the legislature and Governor Andrew Cuomo agreed to cap solitary confinement at 90 days starting in 2022, and prohibit its use on pregnant or disabled prisoners. After 90 days, the prisoner is supposed to be transferred to a “step-down” unit.

But these “step-down” units are the same units that Clyde has lived in for years, making these reforms all but pointless for the 1,629 people held in SHUs across the state.

These reforms were also supposed to give prisoners access to "normal property" items, such as a TV, or items from the commissary, such as a radio or art supplies to pass the time.

Clyde said prison administrators told him there was no infrastructure for televisions in the solitary unit.

“It would mean everything to have a television,” Clyde said. “A TV would actually free us to an extent because we don’t actually get to see anything other than prison guards and, when we look outside, all we see is a concrete stone wall.”

In 2006, while serving a lengthy term for sex crimes convictions, Clyde was sentenced to 12 years in solitary confinement. He declined to talk about the reasons for his SHU placement, noting that prison phone calls are monitored and recorded. Instead, he directed Gothamist to court documents, which confirm that Clyde was sentenced to solitary for several rules violations, including assaulting staff, attempting to commit a sex act, making threats, and “being out of place.”

Clyde said he eventually got two years shaved off of his solitary sentence, and technically finished in 2016. Yet he remains in isolation because prison officials have deemed him a threat to safety. Under this form of “administrative segregation,” Clyde’s case is supposed to be reviewed by a three-person panel every 30 days. Each time, the panel has recommended that he remain in isolation.

Johnny Perez, director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture's U.S. prisons program, said that isolation often exacerbates the problems of mental illness and violence that prisoners struggle with. Numerous studies have shown that prolonged solitary causes adverse psychological effects and increases the risk of serious harm.

Solitary confinement also keeps people like Clyde from participating in rehabilitative programming. “If you’re here for sexual assault, we need to address the reason you’re here. This is not addressed by leaving them [alone] in a cell,” Perez said.

Clyde said that even after being sent to prison, he did not really consider the sexual violence he committed as a 25-year-old. “I put that away. I didn’t think about it,” he said, adding that nothing in the prison forced him to do so.

“I was wrong,” he said. “I had a really short temper and anger issues. I made some bad decisions.” Clyde said he’s learned from his actions, including the ones that landed him in the SHU. He added that he is now 49 years old, thinks things through, and takes others’ well-being into consideration.

“I look at it today and say to myself, ‘You have to be able to control your anger more,’” Clyde said.

Still, there’s no way for him to demonstrate any of this to the three-person panel that has denied his exit from solitary for years.

Last Monday, Clyde began a hunger strike to push prison officials to give him access to the solitary reforms that went into effect last year. Discouraged by the lack of official response, he resumed eating on the fourth day.

The state agency that oversees prisons, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), told Gothamist that Clyde had been eating some or all of the meals delivered to his cell, an assertion that Clyde has vehemently and repeatedly denied.

DOCCS added that all the prisoners in Upstate’s SHU are receiving the new privileges afforded to them by the reforms that went into effect in December, but that the SHU lacks the infrastructure for televisions, and there are no plans to install them.

Meanwhile, DOCCS said it has implemented a pilot program at the Attica Correctional Facility, allowing some to leave solitary ahead of the October 2022 deadline.

“Once the regulation is fully implemented, individuals would transition to a residential rehabilitation unit or step-down unit which could occur in advance of the 30 days, or an individual could be released directly to general population,” spokesperson Thomas Mailey wrote in an email.

If HALT is signed into law, prison officials would still be able to separate people from the general population beyond 15 days, but they would have to grant at least 7 hours out of cell per day, with meaningful human engagement and congregate programming with other people.

While HALT is expected to pass this year, the bill has a one-year implementation period, meaning that Clyde most likely won’t be released from solitary immediately.

“I don’t consider myself a threat to anyone’s safety,” he said. But, he added, there are no opportunities to prove it. “I don’t interact with other people because I’ve been locked in a cell for 14 years and seven months.”