A traveling exhibit rolled into Buffalo Monday for a campaign urging New York State leaders to respect the HALT Act, which limits the use of solitary confinement.
Speakers on the Journey for Justice campaign stood outside Elim Christian Church on Chalmers Avenue in Buffalo, Monday, Oct. 20. Many of them are former prisoners who spent time in solitary confinement, and they shared their stories about psychological and other trauma suffered by their experiences.
Nearby, a modified school bus housed an exhibit of tales and testimonials of others who spent time in solitary, or who were subjected to abuse while in prison.
By coincidence, their visit came on the day three prison guards learned their verdict in the Robert Brooks case. These activists suggest what happened to Brooks inside Marcy Correctional Facility last year could happen to anyone incarcerated.
“We’re here because they murdered Robert Brooks. And on the day that the verdict comes back, exonerating people who were caught on video, we’ve got to fight for HALT’s implementation,” said Jerome Wright, co-director of the HALT Solitary Campaign and a former prisoner who spent time on solitary confinement. “We’ve got to fight for them to stop torturing people while they're murdering us.”
Speakers urged New York State leaders to enforce the HALT Act, signed in 2021 by then Governor Andrew Cuomo. It limits the use of solitary confinement, prohibiting prisons from using it on inmates younger than 21 and older than 55, on women who are pregnant, and on inmates with disabilities. It also limits solitary confinement to 17 hours per day, and no more than 15 days at a time.
Corrections officers who went on a wildcat strike earlier this year argued that the HALT Act makes prisons less safe. Governor Kathy Hochul rolled back some provisions to help end the strike.
“We fought under the harshest of conditions to get this law passed and you will not implement it, you will circumvent it,” said Donna Robinson, a former prisoner and an administrator with New York State Jails Justice Network.
Critics suggest the state had never fully honored the Act from the start.
“They want the communities to believe that everybody inside are less than human. They want you to believe that we are not people that we are not deserving of care, but the Department of Corrections call themselves care custody and control. They leave out the care. All they want to do is keep you in custody and control you,” said Anisah Sabur, a former prisoner and national coordinator of the Unlick the Box Campaign. “I'm here today to say that even after my experience, I can speak out. There are folks like Mr. Brooks and Mr. Nantwi who will never get to tell their story."
Messiah Nantwi was among seven prisoners who died within New York prisons during the first two weeks of the wildcat strike. Some died as the result of medical problems or suicide. But Nantwi’s death, at the Midstate Correctional Facility, was a case similar to that of Brooks. Six guards were charged in the assault, while four were charged with covering it up.
John Kryder, an adjunct professor at Canisius University, addresses prison conditions in some of his classes.
“Most students in high schools and colleges have no idea about the horrors of solitary confinement. When they learn about the horrors, they are angry and repulsed by the injustice of such draconian practices,” he said.
He then recalled remarks by the Russian author and essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky, who stated that the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Kryder suggests if the public really understood what went on within prisons, they, like his students, would be horrified too.
“Solitary law must be followed if we hope to be called civilized in any way,” he said.
The bus was scheduled to stop in Westchester County on Wednesday, and then New York City the following day. Advocates traveling on the Journey to Justice tour will bring their anger and frustration over the Brooks case with them.
“We're torturing people, we're murdering people, and we're doing it with impunity by the Department of Corrections and all these jails,” Wright said. “HALT is the law. You don't follow the law. There's supposed to be consequences and repercussions, not death and destruction of human lives in correctional facilities and jails.”
