In January, New York City’s Board of Correction, which monitors conditions at Rikers Island, passed a new rule: prisoners under the age of 18 can no longer be sentenced to solitary confinement. Citing the detrimental impacts of isolation on young brains, the corrections department publicly touted the new protections.
But in the jail complex, the reality was much different. According to memos obtained by The Marshall Project, Rikers staff found a creative way around the rule: sentencing underage teens to solitary confinement and marking it as “owed time” to be served after their 18th birthdays. In one recent incident, a 17-year-old was sentenced to 20 days in solitary, with the punishment to be carried out when he entered the jail’s adult population. And he was not the only one. According to a letter dated May 22 from Bryanne Hamill, a member of the corrections board, to the corrections commissioner, Joseph Ponte, “this adolescent and many others” have received solitary sentences to be served after they turn 18.
[For more of this story, written by Alysia Santo, go to https://www.themarshallproject...6/02/who-runs-rikers]
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