Reporter/Producer Illustrator/Designer
Anna Vignet
Daffodil Altan Reporter
Trey Bundy
Senior Multimedia Producer
Michael I Schiller
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Robert Salladay
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Marco Villalobos
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Susanne Reber
Sharon Pieczenik
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Mark Katches
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Robert J. Rosenthal
THE BOX Every year, thousands of teens are held in solitary confinement in jails, prisons and juvenile halls nationwide. This is the story of Ismael “Izzy” Nazario and the time he spent in solitary confinement in New York City’s Rikers Island jail. Izzy’s dialogue is taken from transcriptions of audio recordings from several interviews.
Izzy first went to Rikers Island jail in New York City at the age of 16. He counted 300 days in solitary confinement while he was in and out of Rikers as a teen before he was convicted of a crime.
Teenagers at Rikers call solitary confinement the box: 23 hours a day in a 6-by-8-foot cell. Izzy’s longest stretch in solitary was four months.
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Izzy was charged with assault and later with robbery. New York state prosecutes 16-year-olds as adults, no matter what the charge.
Rikers is a city jail, where, on any given day, about 85 percent of inmates await the resolution of their cases.
Rikers Island houses about 12,000 adults and hundreds of teenagers.
Most of the teenagers there are locked up because they can’t afford bail.
Izzy was sent to the box several times, mostly for fighting and once for possessing tobacco.
Rikers’ rules say 16- and 17-year-olds can be sent to the box for horseplay and “noisy behavior” or if they “annoy” staff members.
By law, teenagers in solitary confinement get an opportunity to go outside for an hour each day. Recreation at Rikers means an hour alone in a chain-link cage that’s roughly the same size as the cell.
At Rikers, almost half of all teens have diagnosed mental illnesses. For the youth population in solitary, that number jumps to nearly three-quarters, according to the New York City Board of Correction.
Rikers inmates in solitary confinement are seven times more likely to hurt or mutilate themselves than those in the general population, according to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
The U.S. Department of Justice found in 2009 that half of juvenile suicides behind bars happened while young inmates were in solitary confinement.
There are currently thousands of kids in solitary confinement nationwide.
New York state prisons recently agreed to ban solitary confinement as punishment for inmates younger than 18.
But this doesn’t apply to Rikers Island and other New York jails.
The New York City Department of Correction declined interview requests and would not let CIR visit the box.
Izzy is now a case manager for teens and adults coming out of Rikers Island.
Isolated and Alone: Teens in Solitary Confinement The U.S. has failed to significantly address the issue of holding minors in solitary confinement. Most state laws are vague or nonexistent. Prisons, jails and juvenile halls try to keep their records secret and refuse to open their doors to scrutiny, and the federal government allows states to operate with little oversight. Along the way, the stories of minors locked up alone for months persist, despite strong evidence that extended periods of solitary confinement can lead to mental illness and suicide. The U.S. Department of Justice has called prolonged juvenile isolation cruel and unusual punishment. Attorney General Eric Holder has condemned the practice, and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has convened congressional hearings on solitary confinement. Despite increasing rhetoric in Washington, no federal laws prohibit solitary confinement for youth or limit the number of weeks or months they can be locked in their cells for 23 hours a day. Only the U.S., Somalia and South Sudan have declined to ratify the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits juvenile solitary confinement as a matter of international law. Although federal regulations require that minors in juvenile facilities go outside to exercise for an hour each day, most states allow 23-hour lockdowns that can go on indefinitely. Seven states – Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Nevada, Oklahoma and West Virginia – have placed some prohibition on juvenile solitary confinement. In Maine, however, the ban is not explicit, and a
loophole in Nevada allows isolation if “less-restrictive options have been exhausted.” Even experts admit they don’t know exactly what’s going on. “There is a certain chaos of information,” says Juan Méndez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture. “We are all speculating and don’t know exactly the size of this problem.” Robert Listenbee, head of the juvenile justice division of the U.S. Department of Justice, has told youth advocates that he takes the issue seriously and that preliminary discussions on isolation have taken place. Still, his office has not implemented any new regulations prohibiting solitary confinement. He declined to comment. Few in the corrections business admit that they use solitary confinement. Instead, they call it punitive segregation, disciplinary segregation, administrative segregation, protective segregation, room time, room restriction, room confinement, disciplinary confinement, secure housing, behavioral treatment housing, restricted housing, restricted engagement, reflection time, suicide watch or isolated confinement for monitoring risk of suicide or self-harm. Méndez says the litany of euphemisms highlights how some corrections officials mask what’s really going on inside their facilities. He says there was a parallel debate over the word “torture.” “I don’t know a single country that tortures,” he says, “that calls what it does torture.”
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