At Rikers Island, these uses of solitary confinement by other euphemistic names led directly to the deaths of 25-year-old Brandon Rodriguez last year, and 31-year-old Elijah Muhammad this July. Solitary confinement is simply torture by another name. It causes immediate and lasting physical and psychological damage to the people subjected to those brutal conditions.

In the context of the continuing humanitarian crisis in our city jails, solitary confinement is deadly. Banning solitary confinement as proposed by a new City Council bill — which had a committee hearing yesterday — will save lives.

It is particularly important to pass this bill given the current state of our city jails: More than half of the people held by the Department of Correction have a mental health diagnosis. As of July, a monthly average of 18% of people in our city jails experienced serious mental illness.

People with mental health conditions are especially vulnerable to the harm caused by extended isolation from others. Rodriguez had a known history of mental illness and yet was locked in isolation in a shower cage for hours, while suffering from an orbital fracture, and there took his own life.

The bill under consideration would require mental health staff to check frequently on people held for de-escalation purposes, or who are confined to their cells during emergency lock-ins. This is critical because the trauma caused by isolation is compounded for those who are not provided timely access to mental health care, a failure for which DOC was held in contempt earlier this year.

Our jails have become mental health facilities that inflict trauma instead of providing adequate care. In such a setting, we must ensure that the inhumane practice of solitary confinement, by any name, is outlawed.

Second, the culture of neglect and dysfunction in our city jail has reached an unthinkable level. This is reflected in the continuing crisis of uniformed staff not reporting to work or being at their assigned posts, as happened in the case of Kevin Bryan, who two weeks ago hung himself on a unit that lacked full staffing.

In this utter chaos, and in the face of this shocking behavior, any steps that can be taken to prevent further deaths must be taken immediately — and that includes banning solitary confinement.

We must follow the facts, not fear or baseless claims that solitary by another name is necessary to maintain order in a disordered system. Studies have shown that there are humane ways to prevent people in custody from engaging in violence.

Simply ensuring that uniformed staff are at their assigned posts, performing their assigned duties, is an obvious, critical first step to maintain order. Opponents of this measure may claim that DOC needs more staff and financial resources — but that is not the case. As of last month, 12% of DOC staff were out for medical reasons — double the percent who were out for nearly the entire year pre-pandemic — and 8% of staff have been designated as unable to work directly with people in custody.

The abuse of overly generous sick leave has been well-documented. That must lead us to question any claims that additional staffing resources are needed. As the federal court monitor in the ongoing Nunez litigation noted, the DOC has “one of the richest staffing ratios in the country.”

This is not a question of resources, but a question of the will to treat people humanely. The lives of our fellow New Yorkers depend on it.

Ward is the associate vice president at the David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy at The Fortune Society.