By The HALTSolitary Campaign & Mental Health

New York State prisons had an epidemic of suicides in 2024, with the widespread use of solitary
confinement in violation of the HALT Solitary Confinement Law contributing significantly to this
crisis. According to data provided by the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) and
published by the Correctional Association of New York, 25 people died by suicide in 2024. The
number of people who died was more than double the previous year, the highest number since
at least 2000, more than triple the rate of deaths by suicide annually in New York prisons from
2000 to 2023, and more than four times the rate of deaths by suicide in prisons across the
country.

Looking at the locations where these deaths occurred reveals that a vastly disproportionate
number of deaths by suicide took place in solitary confinement. The Department of Corrections
and Community Supervision (DOCCS) has been systematically violating the HALT Solitary
Confinement Law. Among other violations, DOCCS has been locking people who have mental
health needs in solitary in violation of the law’s explicit ban on such confinement. DOCCS has
also been operating so-called alternatives to solitary – including Residential Rehabilitation Units
(RRUs) and Residential Mental Health Units (RMHUs) – as solitary by another name by denying
people the out-of-cell time and group programming required by the law.
These violations have caused devastating harm and death, as the recently released data
shows. In 2024, at least nine of the 25 people who died by suicide, or 36%, were in official
isolation units – namely three people in Special Housing Units (SHUs), three people in RRUs,
and three people in RMHUs. Given that these units hold a relatively small percentage of people
in DOCCS prisons, the rates of death by suicide among people in one of these isolation settings
are vastly disproportionate compared to the rates of death by suicide among people in
non-isolation settings.

Specifically, people died by suicide in isolation units at a rate more than seven times higher than
people in non-isolation settings, including nearly 23 times higher in SHU, three times higher in
RRU, and nearly 32 times higher in RMHU than in non-isolation settings.
Looking at self-harm more broadly, over 60% of self-harm incidents took place in isolation
settings, including SHU, RRU, and RMHU, as well as the Behavioral Health Unit/Therapeutic
Behavioral Unit (BHU/TBU), Residential Crisis Treatment Program (RCTP), and protective
custody. These isolation units had rates of self-harm over 15 times the rates of self-harm in
non-isolation settings, with the rates in SHU 19 times higher than in non-isolation settings, rates
in the RMHU 35 times higher than in non-isolation settings, rates in the BHU/TBU 316 times
higher than in non-isolation settings, rates in the combined disciplinary Residential Mental
Health Treatment Units (RMHTUs) of nearly 50 times higher than in non-isolation settings, and
rates in the RCTP 162 times higher than in non-isolation settings.

Edited by Elizabeth T. Gershoff and Shawna J. Lee

The government of Sweden was the first to institute a ban on all physical punishment of children, including by parents, in 1979. Many countries have truly universal legal prohibitions of physical punishment that apply to all parents, caregivers, and teachers. The majority of countries have limited legal prohibitions on physical punishment in certain settings (e.g., child-care centers, schools, juvenile detention centers); however, the current chapter does not consider such partial bans and instead focuses on complete bans on physical punishment. To date, no country has reversed a complete ban on physical punishment.

American Psychological Association, 2020, 12p.

By Auzeen Shariati, Rob T. Guerette

Purpose Following the rise of the novel coronavirus, de facto residential quarantines resulted either from executive stay-at- home orders, unemployment or through remote work requirements. One question that has arisen is whether the COVID-19 quarantines led to increases in domestic violence (DV), with research findings thus far being mixed. To further this under- standing, this study examined whether the frequency and geographic dispersion of DV increased during stay-at-home and phased reopening periods of the pandemic in New Orleans, Louisiana while accounting for socio-economic determinants. Methods The study built on a natural experiment of home quarantine and examined its effects on DV using a mixed-methods approach of quantitative and geospatial analyses. Data for the analyses came from a sample of 11,502 police reported DV incidents and ArcGIS portal data of sociodemographic information across neighborhood statistical areas (NSAs). Results While results revealed no significant increase of DV during early phases of the quarantine, a significant increase in frequency was observed in the second reopening phase compared to the same time-period in the previous year. However, the dispersion of DV incidents appeared stable with continued concentrations in pre-existing geographic ‘hot spots.’ Conversely, households which were greater in size exhibited significantly fewer DV incidents. Conclusion Findings suggest that prevention programs might target residences already inflicted with domestic violence his- tories in advance of future pandemic or natural disaster related residential quarantines. Findings also reveal that situational factors, such as number of household residents, might be used to triage the delivery of services.

Journal of Family Violence, 2022, 12p.

By Faride Perez Aucar

In 2020, the world experienced an unprecedented global health crisis with the spread of COVID-19 and historic uprisings for racial justice in the aftermath of the state-sanctioned murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The pandemic illuminated extreme health inequities and the many harms of incarceration, when prisons, jails, and detention centers largely failed to protect incarcerated people from illness and death. The racial justice uprisings highlighted a long history of anti-Black racism and terror in the country. They also invigorated movements towards racial justice and helped elevate long-standing calls to abolish the prison industrial complex, defund the police, and invest in communities most impacted by mass incarceration and structural racism. In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, immediately restricting access to abortion across the nation and sparking further efforts to criminalize and block access to reproductive health care. Simultaneously, conservative policymakers, fueled by misinformation and fear, began to increase “Reproductive justice is ‘the human right to own our bodies and control our future, the human right to have children, the human right to not have children, and the human right to parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.’” —SisterSong attacks on transgender people, introducing and passing unprecedented numbers of policies across the nation that threaten and harm the ability of transgender, nonbinary, and queer people to live authentically and with dignity and safety. The incoming Trump administration appears poised to launch additional federal-level attacks on both reproductive health care access and the LGBTQ+ community. These rising threats to bodily autonomy call for a recommitment to reproductive justice as a framework and a goal. As defined by SisterSong, reproductive justice is “the human right to own our bodies and control our future, the human right to have children, the human right to not have children, and the human right to parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” The reproductive justice movement and framework have always demanded that we look beyond access to abortion and contraception and firmly ground our analysis in racial justice and the right to bodily autonomy for all—including people who are incarcerated and/or disproportionately impacted by criminalization. In alignment with abolitionist movements, reproductive justice advocates have long held that incarceration in and of itself is a reproductive injustice and an affront to the right of bodily autonomy. Against a national backdrop of anti-abortion extremism culminating in the fall of Roe v. Wade and the proliferation of attacks on reproductive health care across the country, reproductive justice advocates in California have worked in recent years to expand access to care and protections for incarcerated people with major success. Nationally, women constitute the largest growing segment in the incarcerated state prison population, entering at twice the pace of men. In California, since 1980, the number of women in jail has increased by 210%, and the number of women in prison has increased by 433%, translating to about 25% of the total prison and jail population. Women make up a significant subpopulation of the incarcerated population in California: Approximately 5,793 women were incarcerated in state prisons as of 2017, and about 9,443 were incarcerated in jails as of 2015. Just over 1% of California’s prison population—or 1,617 incarcerated people—identify as nonbinary, intersex, or transgender, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).8 According to a survey of nonbinary, transgender, and intersex individuals in California women’s prisons conducted by the California Office of the Inspector General, 24.4% of respondents identified as nonbinary, 51.2% identified as transgender, and 4.8% identified as intersex.9 Nearly all California carceral facilities continue to place transgender people, along with nonbinary and two-spirit people,10 in sex-segregated facilities based on their genital anatomy rather than their gender identity, gender expression, or where they feel most safe—despite state laws intended to change this.

San Francisco: ACLU of Northern California, 2025. 50p.