Eric Adams Blasts Council Members for Pushing to Ban Solitary Confinement: ‘Do a Week on Rikers’

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Eric Adams is already talking tough and pledging to crack down on violent inmates, even before taking over the city.

The Mayor-elect on Tuesday blasted 29 leftist members of the New York City Council who are trying to ban solitary confinement in prisons.

Speaking with reporters, Adams said, “I’m asking them: Go do a week on Rikers Island, spend time there. Then you come out and tell me that dangerous people should walk up and down and not be held accountable for their actions.”

He vehemently expressed support for “punitive segregation” to punish inmates who attack prison guards and fellow prisoners. (He clarified that he does not support solitary confinement which confines inmates in small areas, but does support the more spacious “segregation” to isolate prisoners.)

He added, “You cannot have a jail system where someone assaults a staffer, slashes an inmate, and they say, ‘It’s all right — I’m going to give you an iPad and just hug you and say don’t do it again.’”

Adams questioned the credentials of his critics in the Council who wrote him a letter calling the practice a form of torture. He noted that he “wore a bulletproof vest for 22 years and protected the people of this city. And [only] when you do that, then you have the right to question me on safety and public safety matters.”

The controversy began last week when Mayor deBlasio announced a ban on solitary confinement, and Adams warned inmates that the policy won’t last long. The Council members are supporting a bill that would ban city prisons from using the practice to punish inmates who become violent.

Their letter to Adams says: “Solitary confinement is considered by the United Nations, human rights organizations and medical and mental health experts to be a form of torture. It causes intense suffering and has taken the lives of countless New Yorkers. New York City will never torture our way to safety.”