A small snippet of the article (which is long and detailed, but only accessible if you sign up)

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.

…

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.”