#HALTsolitary Day of Action and Call Sheets

Thanks to the many of you who have supported coalition efforts and signed RJBK petition letters to stop solitary confinement in our jails and prisons. We appreciate you! Working with the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC pronounced “cake”), we’ve all made great progress against this human rights abuse. But sadly there is still work to do. 

On Tuesday January 21, we will go to Albany for a lobby day at the State Capital to demand passage of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act (S. 1623/A. 2500). It’s the largest-ever #HALTsolitary day of action. Please join the fight for humane treatment of ALL people - particularly those who are vulnerable to state abuse and are rendered invisible by incarceration. We can win and change this.

You can find a fact sheet about solitary confinement in New York here and a summary of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act here. 

I hope you will consider joining us in Albany on January 21st.  If you do plan to join, please RSVP here: http://bit.ly/HALTsolitaryJan21

Regardless of what circumstances have led to their incarceration, we are all deserving of humane treatment and our full human rights. "It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.  A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones."  - Nelson Mandela

Thousands of New Yorkers are locked in solitary confinement for months, years, even decades right now. They’re disproportionately Black and Latinx, LGBTQI+, and people with mental illness, held in a prison within a prison or a jail within a jail with no meaningful human interaction. This is a human rights violation, torture and a breach of international law - and we have the power to stop it.  The entire United Nations General Assembly has denounced solitary exceeding 15 days. In 2015, the US government voted for, and the entire United Nations adopted, the Mandela Rules; which prohibit any person from being held in solitary beyond 15 days.  However, New York currently places no limit on the total time a person can spend in isolated confinement. The degrading consequences of this limitless abuse are psychologically and physically crippling. 

Sign the petition to support the HALT Solitary Confinement Act: https://goo.gl/pRZNyB

Encourage your organization to endorse the HALT Solitary Confinement Act: https://goo.gl/forms/FM2F6DZAcPZp1co32 

RJBK is reaching out to you with more frequency now because 2020 begins a very compressed legislative calendar, of only 57 working days, in which we’ve got very limited time to have an infinitely positive impact. Everyone is needed. How can you help us achieve Justice?