Even with Rikers Island under renewed scrutiny for prisoner neglect and abuses, a transgender prisoner named Layleen Polanco died there in a tragic way — from an epileptic seizure, alone in a dingy cell.
Outrage over Polanco’s 2019 death in solitary confinement at the notorious New York City jail complex, one of the world's largest, helped set the stage for a proposed ban on an age-old disciplinary practice that prisoner advocates have long seen as barbaric.
This week, officials unveiled reforms that Mayor Bill de Blasio asserts add up to a groundbreaking abolishment of punishing unruly prisoners by isolating them.
Full article at the CT Post: Link
