Following years of intense scrutiny and two high-profile deaths of inmates who had been held in solitary confinement, the city is poised to become the largest one to ban the practice.
Earlier this year, Mayor de Blasio vowed to abolish solitary, which has come in for fierce criticism from advocates, inmates, officials and, in particular, the families of Kalief Browder, whose 2015 suicide was widely attributed to his long stints in solitary before his release from Rikers Island, and Layleen Polanco, who died last year while in punitive segregation, as the practice of isolating prisoners is also known.
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