Screams echoed through the halls of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility as women begged for their solitude to end. The sound of desperate hands banging on cell doors rang out like a solemn chorus. Exhausted, an incarcerated woman named Cici Herrera reached for a book. “That’s the only way I can keep myself from thinking too much,” she said. “I’m going crazy.”
At Bedford Hills, a maximum-security women’s prison in Westchester County, New York, a new superintendent and a recent policy change have sharply restricted the limited freedom incarcerated people in the general population once enjoyed. They could no longer count on regular showers — times were limited to tightly controlled shifts — and indoor recreation was eliminated even on the coldest days of the New York winter. The women found themselves locked inside of their single cells for the majority of the day, in conditions detention experts and survivors of solitary confinement compared to solitary confinement.
“Nothing is consistent,” said Herrera, one of three people incarcerated at Bedford who told The Intercept about the conditions. “We have to scream for everything.”
The conditions likely violate state law, according to multiple detention experts, all of whom have spoken with people incarcerated at Bedford. The new restrictions put the women in the middle of a political battle between activists who fought to place restrictions on the use of solitary and prison guards who have protested their implementation.
New York’s Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, or the HALT Act for short, limits the amount of time an incarcerated person can be forced to stay in their cell and when a prison guard can put a person in solitary, taking into account the punishment’s severe harm to physical and mental health. Researchers have found that solitary confinement increases the risks of premature death both during and after incarceration, from deaths of despair like opioid overdoses and suicide.
“We have to scream for everything.”
“People should be receiving at least a minimum… seven hours out of cell time under the HALT Act,” said Sumeet Sharma, director of policy and communications at the Correctional Association of New York. Most people at Bedford previously had some freedom of movement to access communal spaces, shower, and cook. But when his team conducted a two-day monitoring visit at Bedford in November, they found that “that’s just not happening anymore,” Sharma said. “Essentially, people are locked in.”
The New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has denied these accusations.
“The allegations regarding recent operational changes at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility are inaccurate and misleading,” wrote Nicole March, a spokesperson for the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, in a statement to The Intercept. March said the changes were implemented to deal with “frequent fights and safety concerns” at Bedford Hills.
March added that many facilities still lack adequate staffing due to an unauthorized prison guard strike in spring of 2025, but that “HALT programming is now fully operational in the overwhelming majority of facilities and, with respect to Bedford Hill, it has been for several months.”
That compliance appears to exist “on paper,” said Sharma, whose team confirmed that people in the general population units had lost access to communal indoor recreation space and now had to sign up to leave their cells after speaking with prison guards, officials, and incarcerated people. A written copy of the policy reviewed by The Intercept also noted the restrictions on recreation.
“In practice,” Sharma said, even when people sign up to leave their cells, “they’re not getting the statutory amount out of cell time. That appears to be a violation of the HALT Act.”
Corrections officers in New York have long been resistant to implementing HALT. Thousands of guards went on a wildcat strike last year after a group of corrections officers was charged with murder for brutally beating and killing an incarcerated man named Robert Brooks. In addition to protesting accountability for Brooks’s killers, the guards demanded that HALT be repealed. They argue the law places an undue burden on them by making it harder to put people in solitary confinement, either as a punishment or a safety tool.
Although the guards didn’t get their wish, advocates who helped get the law passed said New York corrections officers and prison officials are still refusing to implement the limits on solitary confinement and mandatory out-of-cell time throughout the system.
“The legislation is not being adhered to” by administrators at Bedford, said Donna Hylton, an activist who was incarcerated at Bedford Hills for 27 years and campaigned to get the law passed.
Herrera said she’s especially worried for the women who are too old or sick to use the outdoor recreation space in winter.
“You put somebody, 24 hours, in one cell with four walls, it’s a lot to take,” she said. “Mentally, some people can’t handle this kind of situation.”
All three people incarcerated at Bedford who spoke to The Intercept characterized their treatment at the hands of the guards as vindictive, reflecting a conviction that incarcerated people deserve additional punishment beyond their imprisonment.
Herrera and two other people incarcerated at Bedford got in touch with The Intercept via the Fight 2 Live Relief Fund, a New York abolitionist organization that has been advocating for better conditions at Bedford.
An incarcerated woman named Kit, who requested anonymity because she feared retaliation from prison officials and guards, said she’d heard guards call incarcerated women “entitled, needy, [having] ‘princess syndrome.’ It’s that mentality that, oh, this isn’t hard enough for these women.”
“That is where these policies are coming from — not from a desire to make the facility safer or to operate better,” Kit said, “but this sick and twisted sense of entertainment and satisfaction out of the pain and the stress of incarcerated individuals who are affected by these policies.”
Thomas Gant, a formerly incarcerated activist and organizer with the Center for Community Alternatives who is in communication with people inside of Bedford, characterized the situation at the prison as the combined result of policy changes and retaliation from guards taking their anger out on incarcerated people. Many guards remain dissatisfied with the end result of the strike, after which Gov. Kathy Hochul fired thousands of officers in an already-understaffed system and increased surveillance.
“The relation is, we’re just going to make you guys’ lives as miserable as possible,” he said. “[Their] way of getting at you back is to say, ‘Hey, there’s staff shortages, so you guys can’t go to the yard, or, you know, you can’t have this visit, or I got a longer time to get you down to the visit.’ These are just all retaliatory tactics, all because correction officers now have a semblance of being held accountable.”
The New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, which represents the guards, declined to comment.
Chloe Aquart, a senior program manager at the Center for Justice Innovation, said the culture of “secondary punishment” among prison guards is widespread at U.S. prisons.
“That’s kind of how we operate in the United States,” she said. “So prison isn’t enough. The treatment in prison has to be an additional punishment, beyond taking you away from your family, taking you away from your community, stripping your rights.”
The “most concerning” change at Bedford, said Sharma, “was that you had women in general population units who weren’t able to take a shower.”
Instead, he said that women were given the option to use a bucket to bathe if they were unable to get a shower slot for the day. “So someone would have the same bucket … that they’re using to store some things in, or if someone is menstruating, that bucket is used to dispose of bodily fluids and bodily material. So that same bucket is essentially being refilled before that and then given to people for getting them to wash themselves,” he said.
The limited showers have also affected people whose religious practices require bathing before worship. “As a Muslim,” wrote Nur, an incarcerated transgender man who wanted to remain anonymous to prevent retaliation from prison officials, in a letter to The Intercept. “It is required to perform ablution (cleansing) before prayer.”
Even if you can get a shower slot, that doesn’t mean staff will actually let you out at the intended time, Nur wrote. “They are not letting people out of their cells at their allotted time,” wrote Nur. “Incarcerated individuals are losing patience, resulting in screaming and banging on the cell door to obtain the attention of the security staff. Sadly, we are ignored.”
DOCCS denied the allegations of inadequate shower time and lack of religious accommodations, but confirmed that showers are limited to specific time slots.
“Shower access has not been eliminated or limited. Available daily time slots begin at 8:45am and end at 9:30pm,” wrote March in an email. “Additionally, hot water is delivered to every incarcerated individual at around 6:00am. Individuals often use this hot water to wash their faces or take quick sponge baths.”
Herrera had spent the last four years of her life behind Bedford’s iron gates, but she said things have gotten steadily worse since October, when a new deputy superintendent arrived named Michael Blot.
Sharma and two other advocates in New York also pointed to Blot’s role in the changes.
The new policy on out-of-cell time “seems to be a decision that was made by a new Deputy Superintendent who came to the prison in the fall last year after a stint at Sing Sing,” said Sharma, referring to a maximum-security men’s prison further upstate.
F2L began a letter-writing campaign to DOCCS in November asking for Blot to be fired and for regular shower access and indoor recreation time to be restored. Anisah Sabur, a lead organizer in the HALT Solitary Campaign, agreed that Blot “came in and made a bunch of changes.”
“This individual is saying that Bedford is a maximum-security facility, and these are the maximum-security regulations that they are following,” Sabur said, “but most of them are just blatant violations of the HALT law.”
DOCCS denied that Blot was solely responsible for the sweeping changes at Bedford.
“Facility operations are based on established Department policies, not individual management preferences,” wrote March, the DOCCS spokesperson, in December.
The chaos and tensions created by these changes from both guards and incarcerated people at Bedford Hills have also heightened incidents of violence, said Nur. Herrera also mentioned increased violence against incarcerated people at Bedford.
In mid-November, Nur said a woman tried to leave her cell with a robe on “to retrieve a water bucket,” because she wasn’t able to shower during her allotted time. According to Nur, a guard asked the incarcerated woman what she was doing. The woman explained that she was bathing and put her hands up and backed away.
Next, Nur said that the officer “charged towards” the woman, punching her in the face and slamming her naked body onto the ground. “The response team [answered] with [further] abuse,” wrote Nur, in a letter to The Intercept. “They dragged her off the unit, exposing her naked body in front of her peers and male security. It was traumatizing to witness.”
“I’m afraid that I could be next,” he said.
DOCCS declined to comment on the allegation, saying they were unable to without a name or “case-specific details.”
Nur said he knows how to endure isolation, but the grief and fear throughout Bedford have been devastating to witness.
“To witness the madness that surrounds me is terrifying.”
“To witness the madness that surrounds me is terrifying,” he wrote. “I can handle confinement; it’s just mentally draining to hear many of my peers cry in agony about not wanting to be alone for so many hours confined. It brings an emotion that I can not explain: I can only compare it to empathy. I know what it feels like to be abandoned and forgotten.”
“This new policy … is creating cabin fever and chaos,” said Kit. “They’re being held in their cells for hours and days with nothing to do to be proactive, unable to shower, unable to clean their cells, unable to cook and make their food. And the officers, and particularly the security in the garden, seem to be getting a very sick pleasure out of it.”
The mental impact of isolation is something Kit understands all too well.
For nearly a decade, Kit, who is transgender, was held in solitary confinement in multiple men’s prisons before being sent to Bedford. The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act technically prohibits placing trans inmates in solitary confinement for their protection without their consent, but in practice, the overwhelming majority of trans people incarcerated in the United States have spent time in solitary confinement.
“I almost lost my life on numerous occasions,” said Kit. “These are women who have never experienced solitary confinement, who are used to regular programming … are being thrown into days and days with nothing to do, literally overnight.”
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