When a child breaks a rule, they are often put in “time out.” Some county-run facilities in New York state have a habit of putting its kids in time out, too, only for 23 hours a day for months.

Taijaleke Smith, a 16-year-old from Syracuse, is currently suing the Onondaga County Justice Center after being held in an isolated cell for 23 hours a day at the facility over the course of two months. State prisons are required to let minors out of their cells for five hours a day, but at this local jail in Onondaga County, activists say the practice continues, according to Syracuse.com.

The case comes after New York state officials Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney vowed in 2015 to put an end to placing 16- and 17-year-old juveniles in solitary confinement in New York state.

To bring her vow to fruition, Mahoney moved the juveniles who were locked up alone for 40 hours at a time in the Jamesville Correctional facility, to the Onondaga County Justice Center in downtown Syracuse. As reported by Time Warner Cable News Central New York in October 2015, the move was meant to offer rehabilitative and educational resources that would benefit the young offenders.

The practice of solitary confinement, especially among juveniles, has been proven to be more detrimental than beneficial for more than a century. In a city like Syracuse, where 34 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census, there is a systematic preservation of merely shepherding marginalized peoples through the criminal justice system.

“African-American poor men are criminalized from the day they’re born,” said Gretchen Purser, an assistant professor of sociology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. “Part of the reason solitary confinement gets perpetuated is because of the dehumanization of prisoners.”

And it appears there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

In New York state, specifically, victims of solitary confinement were found to be more prone to commit suicide than the general population. After having developed anxiety, depression and paranoia, among other mental health issues, many prisoners who have endured solitary are then released into mainstream society.

This was realized with the high-profile 2015 case of Kalief Browder, who was incarcerated for three years on Riker’s Island. Browder spent two of those three years in solitary confinement, starting the age of 16. He was released at 19 and found it hard to assimilate back into a life of human interaction, still suffering from the mental side effects of long-term isolation. At the age of 22, he committed suicide.

The Browder case shed light on the falsities that are claims of rehabilitative properties of solitary confinement. The sociability that is paramount in the teenage years has the potential to create more amplified problems in young people. Solitary confinement is perennially damaging to anyone who is subjected to it. In the years where the foundation for adulthood is laid, constant isolation has the tendency to ruin a teenager, especially since those in prison that young are disproportionately from marginalized groups.

Apparently, even some local people in power are insensitive about what happens to this youth.

On Sept. 24, 2015, at a meeting for public safety departments for the 2016 budget, Onondaga County officials confronted Timothy Cowin, the commissioner for the Jamesville Correctional facility about youth in solitary confinement.

According to the minutes from the session, in response to accusations of leaving minors in individual cells for 40 hours at a time, Cowin said, “Punitive segregation is a thing that happens — it is really the only thing we have.”

He went on to talk about how the kids in solitary confinement are not forced to go to education programs like the other adolescents because it is not required by law.

“They are 16,” said Cowin. “And can bail out on their own if they want.”

This came before officials decided to remove juveniles from Jamesville or any high-profile politicians decided to speak out for the silent against those who treat these situations as status quo. It is extraordinarily telling about the culture surrounding this larger problem: youth in the criminal justice system are seen as subhuman burdens, undeserving of any healing opportunities.

“Without intervention efforts taking into account background and social skills, isolation won’t do anything other than reinforce negative feelings, such as anger and frustration,” said Randall Jorgensen, a professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

People in power should understand that it is vital to create a healthier and existent future for the vulnerable who find their way into trouble. Prisons should not be chicken coops; they should be places where people who have wronged go to rehabilitate, to break the cycle of bad decision-making and to start anew upon their release.

The people that are in the spotlight, the youth, are just two or three years younger than I am. Two years ago, it was all about college tours and SATs. This gap in opportunity seems wrong. These young men who, as a result of where they stood on a social spectrum and the subsequent decisions they made, found their way into a system that does not serve to make them better.

The loneliness of solitary confinement is bad enough on its own, further leaving them to confront themselves, to be traumatized, without mentorship, proper care or a good book to read, there will be no moving on from it. At 16, they are forced to accept a fate that is not believed to be malleable.

Young, poor black males in local jails are left with this self-fulfilling prophecy of having no place to go. They cannot go to a prison with the resources they need, they are born into a demographic where they are already a statistic in the criminal justice system, and they are constantly deemed unworthy by society when they do achieve success. The system as a whole does not treat them as innocent before proven guilty, and they are considered encumbrances by the ones who are supposed to heal them for a better future.

None of it has to be this way. The prohibiting of placing juveniles in solitary confinement in federal, state and county prisons is a step forward, but it needs to be enforced. Still, by allocating more money to disseminating access to rehabilitative, mental health and career services in all facilities, the light at the end of the tunnel will begin to brighten.

Joanna Orland is a freshman newspaper and online journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at jorland@syr.edu.

Published on February 4, 2016 at 12:53 am