On Monday, New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would have strictly limited the state’s use of solitary confinement. Had the bill passed, state prisons would have been barred from placing vulnerable populations—including pregnant women, children, seniors, LGBTQ people, and those with mental illnesses—in solitary. The bill also would have required solitary to be utilized exclusively as a last result, prohibited solitary confinement for 15 consecutive days, and required daily evaluations of inmates in solitary. Thanks to Christie’s veto, none of those rules will apply to New Jersey prisons.
In his veto statement, Christie declared: “This bill seeks to resolve a problem that does not exist in New Jersey, because the Department of Corrections (“DOC”) in this Administration does not utilize isolated confinement, as contemplated by the bill.” I asked Alexander Shalom, a Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU New Jersey, whether this claim was accurate.
“No. It’s bullshit,” he told me. “No matter what Christie calls it, and no matter how much he denies it, the reality is that hundreds of people in New Jersey are suffering in solitary confinement every day. And by vetoing this bill, he has ensured that the most vulnerable people in New Jersey prisons will continue to be tortured in this way.”
Shalom explained that the Christie Administration has taken the position that, with its encouragement, the DOC stopped using solitary. But in reality, the DOC simply provided cellmates to inmates in solitary. Both the courts and the federal government, however, agree that solitary confinement—isolation of an inmate in a small cell for 22 to 23 hours a day—is still solitary confinement, even with a roommate. Indeed, the torturous psychological effects of solitary leads to the same psychological disorders, including heightened risk of suicide and mental illness, regardless of the presence of a second inmate.
Yet “even by Christie’s limited and incorrect definition,” Shalom noted, “New Jersey does have people in single-cell administrative segregation.” Christie, in other words, was simply lying.
In Christie’s veto statement, the governor also insisted that his administration “ended disciplinary detention as a sanction.” But Shalom told me that this is misleading wordplay.
“The governor is technically correct that New Jersey had ended ‘disciplinary detention.’ But inmates accused of violating a rule are still sent to ‘administrative segregation’—which is exactly what courts throughout the country define solitary confinement to be. 22, 23 hours a day alone in your cell, or with one other person.”
Christie also boasts that New Jersey has “cut down on the maximum amount of time people can spend in administrative segregation”—to one year per “incident.” What does that look like in practice?
“We had a case,” Shalom told me, “in which an inmate committed an infraction, and when the guards went to get him from his room, they claimed he resisted. The prison’s position was: That’s two different incidents, so that inmate is eligible for two years of administrative segregation.”
As for Christie’s claim one of the bill’s requirements—mandating daily screenings of inmates in solitary—was redundant, because “medical and mental health professionals” already consider “the individual health conditions of an inmate” before placing him in administrative segregation?
“Here’s a real example of how that screening works in practice,” Shalom said. “A doctor came to the door of a cell. The prisoner refused to get out from under the bedsheet. The doctor wrote that there was no evidence that the prisoner was mentally ill, and that it was O.K. for him to be sent to solitary.”
Thanks to Christie, these practices will continue through the rest of his administration. The bill he vetoed was written after consultation with county jail wardens, unions representing corrections officers, and mental health experts, all in an effort to craft best practices. (New Jersey’s DOC refused to meet with the bill’s sponsors or supporters; it strongly endorsed Christie’s veto.) Had Christie signed the bill, he could have protected extraordinarily vulnerable inmates without burdening the prison system. Instead, he has ensured that pregnant women, children, and mentally ill inmates will continue to be locked in tiny cells for most of the day.
Christie, who has thirteen months left in his second and final term, currently has an approval rating of 18 percent. 71 percent of New Jersey voters believe he should have been tried for his involvement in the Bridgegate scandal. New Jersey taxpayers continue to foot the bill for Christie’s defense in the ongoing Bridgegate investigation.
