About a dozen members of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock on Saturday protested the incarceration practices of Nassau County and the state outside the county’s Correctional Facility in East Meadow, where five inmates have committed suicide since 2010.
“Our goal is to get the word out that we are unhappy with what’s taking place at the Nassau County Jail,” said Claire Deroche, the congregation’s social justice chair and a member of the Campaign for Alternative to Isolated Confinement. “We have a problem with mass incarceration and solitary confinement, in particular.”
The protest took place across the street from the correctional facility along Carman Avenue, with demonstrators marching and carrying signs in opposition to solitary confinement.
“We imprison more people in the United States than in any other industrialized nation. One way of getting at the issue of mass incarceration was solitary confinement,” Deroche said. “We were concerned about the number of mentally ill inmates being put in solitary. That really is torture, to put someone who is mentally ill into solitary.”
According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, approximately 4,500 prisoners across the state live in solitary confinement.
Saturday’s rally was initially planned for Dec. 10, 2013 – the date declared Human Rights Day by the United Nations in 1950 – but snow forced the congregation to postpone until June, which the U.N. has made Torture Awareness Month, Deroche said.
Deroche said the rally did not require a permit approval from Nassau County because protestors did not use a microphone.
“We didn’t want to go for a permit because we didn’t want to be told no,” she said. “There have been several other protests across from the jail and they were not shut down, but if we were told to move, we were just going to go up toward Hempstead Turnpike.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union successfully sued Nassau County in state Supreme Court in 2012 over the suicide deaths of five inmates in two years.
In his ruling, acting Justice James P. McCormack in 2013 ordered the county to establish an independent oversight board at the correctional center to provide inmates with adequate medical and mental health care.
“We hope this ruling represents a turning point in the decades-long long saga of mistreatment and neglect at the jail,” said Corey Stoughton, the New York Civil Liberties Union’s attorney on the case, at the time of the ruling. “Strong, independent oversight can help end this troubling history and finally ensure that inmates receive the basic medical care they need.”
Calls placed to Nassau County officials for comment on the case or protest went unreturned.
The rally was the latest in a series of events the congregation has held to raise awareness about solitary confinement and gain support for curbing its use.
In mid March, the congregation hosted three speakers for a lecture and question-and-answer session about their experiences in being either wrongfully placed into solitary confinement or coping with their incarcerated loved ones living in isolation.
On May 5, members from the congregation joined advocates in Albany to lobby state lawmakers to pass the HALT Solitary Confinement Act, which would prevent inmates from spending more than 15 consecutive days in isolation and 20 total days within a 60-day period.
The law, Deroche said, was introduced during the recent state legislative session and received the support of about 20 Assembly members and five senators.
