It’s not just How Many Stops that’s queued up for a City Council veto-override battle: Mayor Adams also, and as rightly, rejected the bill to ban all use of solitary confinement in the city’s jails.
This one may not impact public safety as broadly as the effort to bury cops in paperwork, but it’s a matter of life and death for everyone in the Correction system — those detained as much as staff.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a main driver of Bill 549-A, hyperventilates that solitary is a form of torture; in reality it’s a perfectly humane and essential part of any successful correctional department.
It allows the people operating the jail to keep other inmates and guards safe from incorrigibly violent crooks.
But don’t listen to us.
You can take the word of the federal monitoring team overseeing New York’s dysfunctional Rikers jails that the ban would “undermine the overall goals of protecting individuals.”
And: “Those who engage in serious violence while in custody must be supervised in a manner that is different from that used for the general population.” (Emphasis not ours, but we absolutely concur.)
Note that monitor Steve Martin has been at odds with Adams since the mayor took office.
It’s an utterly commonsensical position.
Among prison populations, some inmates do their best to follow rules; others are agents of bloody chaos.
That’s why some 1,500 city Correction officers have been assaulted since 2021, 22 sexually.
Consider the violence dangerous inmates wage against their fellows: One hideous recent example is the assault on another jailbird by deranged Grand Central stabber Steven Hutcherson.
With no possibility of putting the most dangerous offenders within a jail into housing designed to stop more violence before it starts, we’ll see exactly that: more violence.
Much of it directed against a population, incarcerated criminals, the bill’s progressive backers claim to love.
New York’s left proves yet again Orwells’ dictum: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
