Guards ask NJ lawmakers to expand solitary confinement

Corrections officers cite rising assaults, while advocates for incarcerated people warn that longer isolation could worsen prison violence.

New Jersey lawmakers heard competing arguments Oct. 15 over a proposal to loosen restrictions on solitary confinement, with supporters arguing that the changes would protect corrections officers.

State Sen. Linda Greenstein, D-Middlesex, introduced the measure on Sept. 28. She believes certain restrictions outlined in the state’s Isolated Confinement Restriction Act have “significantly contributed to the increase in assaults” on guards, according to a statement accompanying her bill.

But opponents disputed that before the state Senate’s Law and Public Safety Committee, saying the bill would lead to more aggressive behavior and deeply scar the psyches of those forced to endure prolonged isolation.

“Officer safety and humane treatment are not competing priorities; they are mutually reinforcing responsibilities,” said Rev. J. Amos Caley, pastor at the Reformed Church of Highland Park and an organizer with New Jersey Prison Justice Watch. “If we want safer prisons, we need to make the prisons more functional — not increase the practices that further erode that safety, which isolation is documented to do.”

The Isolated Confinement Restriction Act, signed into law in 2019, effectively banned holding prisoners in isolation for more than 20 consecutive days or 30 total days within a 60-day period. The law also barred solitary confinement for certain vulnerable populations, including people with mental illness, pregnant women, people 65 and older, and those 21 and younger.

Greenstein’s bill, S-4595, would exempt repeatedly violent incarcerated people from those limits and change the definition of isolated confinement in state prisons from approximately 20 hours or more per day to approximately 22 hours or more, matching the existing standard for county jails.

Under the bill, a repeatedly violent inmate is defined as someone whose recent threats or conduct indicate a substantial risk of serious harm to themselves or others, for whom less restrictive measures would be insufficient, and who has previously been placed in isolation or classified under close custody on at least two occasions.

The bill would also allow members of vulnerable populations to be placed in isolation under certain circumstances, namely, if there is “reasonable cause to believe that the inmate would create a substantial risk of serious harm to the inmate’s self or another.”

In other cases, the incarcerated person would have to give informed, voluntary, written consent before such a move.

The bill would also eliminate the requirement for daily medical and mental health examinations for prisoners held in isolation in state prisons, replacing it with examinations at least once a week or more often when clinically necessary.

It would also narrow certain criteria for identifying vulnerable populations, including removing a history of psychiatric hospitalization as a standalone criterion and changing how incarcerated people are identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex. Under the proposal, that determination would require a medical or mental health evaluation or a specified judicial finding involving the risk of abuse or harassment.

These changes would give corrections officers a way to deal with the small population of repeatedly violent inmates who disrupt prison operations and interfere with the rehabilitation of others, according to William Sullivan, president of the 4,500-member corrections officers’ union.

Sullivan told lawmakers the union doesn’t want to undo the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act. Instead, guards want to be able to “separate repetitive violent inmates when necessary, provide appropriate treatment, establish meaningful consequences, and allow them a way to earn their way back in the general population through positive behavior.”

“I believe we can protect vulnerable inmates while holding repetitive violent individuals accountable,” he said. “We do not need to choose between real rehabilitation and security. We need both.”

That’s particularly important because of the sharp increase in assaults against guards, Sullivan said.

In 2018, before the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act passed, there were 416 staff assaults, he said. In 2025, there were 1,204 assaults.

“We have seven years of data, and we need to adjust these things so that we can swing the pendulum back the other way and help with the assaults,” Sullivan said.

But Ronald Pierce, deputy ombudsman for the state’s Office of the Corrections Ombudsperson, testified that staff assaults have dropped significantly this year, even though the law hasn’t changed.

Part of that may be due to changes the Department of Corrections made, such as installing splash guards and creating a new mail process that has reduced the amount of contraband entering the facilities, he said.

“There are a number of other things that the DOC has implemented that are starting to show results,” he said. “Without giving them time, we’re actually trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We want to monitor the practices … We want time to look better at this topic.”

Pierce urged lawmakers to wait for the ombudsperson’s office to release new data next year before making any sweeping changes.

Certain measures taken by the Department of Corrections, such as installing splash guards and security food ports, have reduced assaults involving bodily fluids, William Sullivan said. But inmates tend to adapt.

“You fix something, then people figure out how to get around it,” he said.

Jason Cook, a state corrections officer and union representative, also supported the changes and testified that an inmate had assaulted him by throwing bodily fluids on him.

“This legislation recognizes something correctional officers have been saying for years: there’s a difference between an inmate who genuinely needs protection because of serious mental health or other vulnerabilities, and an inmate who repeatedly engages in violent behavior and presents a continuing danger to officers and other inmates,” Cook said.

“That is not indiscriminate punishment,” he said. “That is recognizing repetitive dangerous behavior … We need consequences that inmates understand.”

‘Your humanity gets stripped away’

Social justice advocates, academics, state watchdog officials and formerly incarcerated people oppose the proposed changes.

Caley said the provisions in S-4595 would be a huge step backward if enacted.

Psychologists, criminal justice researchers and the United Nations have documented that inhumane treatment begets violent and aggressive behavior, he said. That means the answer to the prison system’s problems isn’t more isolation.

Instead, lawmakers and Department of Corrections administrators should look to create alternatives to solitary confinement that include mental health resources, programs aimed at resolving conflicts and repairing harm between staff and residents, and expanded clinical services, he said.

Other states have introduced such measures, and violent activity in those institutions has fallen by up to 74%, Caley added.

Beyond that, Pierce said there aren’t enough well-vetted, independent findings to consider changing the legislation yet.

Jim Sullivan, deputy policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, added that the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act has produced real change since its implementation.

Research has shown that holding inmates in prolonged isolation leads to high rates of anxiety, confused thinking, depression, and hallucinations, he said. Other research has shown that former inmates with a history of solitary confinement exhibited more post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and higher mortality rates after their release, including from suicide, homicide and overdose.

But the studies have offered little support for the idea that putting prisoners in solitary makes facilities safer, he said.

“Violence is a serious problem that policy must address,” Sullivan said. “However, the research supports the claim that long isolation is a poor tool for reducing it.”

Concerns about conditions and vulnerable prisoners

The proposed changes could also hurt the prison system’s LGBTQ+ community, according to Michael Isaacson, communications director for Justice 4 Demi, an LGBTQ+ prison justice organization.

Isaacson said he has spoken to more than a dozen incarcerated LGBTQ+ people in New Jersey who told him guards use solitary confinement as punishment for conduct violations and retaliation for filing grievances.

Guards have also used it to prevent self-harm and accommodate persistent Department of Corrections staffing shortages, he said.

But those held in isolation have reported dire conditions, including no access to clean water, showers, heating, or air conditioning, he said. The cells regularly have broken toilets that leak sewage and are infested with roaches and vermin.

“Isolated confinement is dehumanizing and dangerous, and recognized by the United Nations as a form of torture,” Isaacson told lawmakers. “The conditions in the units of isolated confinement are atrocious.”

Antonne Henshaw, a Camden man who spent 30 years in prison for murder before his release in 2018, told lawmakers that his first stint in solitary was torture.

At one point, he said, he spent roughly 18 months in isolation.

“What happens is, your humanity gets stripped away from you,” said Henshaw, the founder of the Transformative Justice Initiative. “You start losing sense of who you are and [your] value. We do not have to degrade in order to punish. We don’t have to dehumanize in order to punish. Yet, we do.”

“My scar tissue hasn’t gone away, and I’ve been home eight years,” he said. “We bring this home with us. And this not only makes the officers unsafe; it makes the community unsafe. Isolated confinement, as currently running in New Jersey’s Department of Correction, is one of the biggest public health threats to people being released.”