D.C.'s bill to end solitary confinement is running out of time

There is a bill before the D.C. Council that would end solitary confinement in the District's jails. It was introduced on January 6, 2025, and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety on January 21. It has sat there ever since. 

Originally introduced by Councilmember Mary Cheh in 2022, the bill has been re-introduced in subsequent sessions (including as Bill B25-0541 and Bill B26-0028 in 2025) with backing from multiple D.C. Council members and advocacy groups. In 2025, Councilmember Brianne Nadeau introduced the ERASE Act (B26-0028) with six colleagues, and the Unlock the Box DC coalition helped write it. IAHR is a partner in the Unlock the Box campaign, and we want this bill heard. 

The Facts

The Eliminating Restrictive and Segregated Enclosures ("ERASE") Solitary Confinement Act is proposed legislation in Washington, D.C. designed to heavily restrict or ban solitary confinement and isolation practices inside local jails.

Key Provisions of the Act

• Ban on Segregated Confinement: It prohibits most forms of segregated confinement, including disciplinary segregation, protective custody, administrative segregation, and housing restrictions.
• Out-of-Cell Time: It mandates that incarcerated individuals receive at least 8 hours daily out of their cells or isolation.
• Safe Cell Restrictions: It strictly limits the use of "safe cells" (used for mental health crises or suicide watch) to a short time frame, such as 48 hours, and ensures proper mental health care.
• Exceptions: It allows narrow, time-limited exceptions strictly for emergency public health quarantine, medical isolation, or immediate self-harm risks.

What the bill would do

At its heart is one guarantee. Everyone held in a DC Department of Corrections facility would get at least eight hours a day out of their cell, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., with room to move, be around other people, shower, and take part in programs. The jail could not take that time away for discipline, for security, for administrative convenience, or in the name of preventing suicide. 

Two narrow exceptions remain. Someone with a communicable disease can be medically isolated, and a health professional has to revisit that decision at least every 24 hours. Someone on suicide watch can be placed in a "safe cell" only when it is immediately necessary to prevent death or serious injury. A health professional must check on them at least every four hours, and after 48 continuous hours the jail has to move them to a hospital or another care setting.

The Department would also have to publish quarterly reports on its use of isolation, and people held in violation of the law could sue the District.

What we know about the D.C. Jail

The jail holds between 900 and 1,300 people at a time, most of them awaiting trial or serving short misdemeanor sentences.

The Department's director told the Council in April 2024 that the jail does not practice solitary confinement. The Department's own records tell a different story. An agency memo put 8% of the people in its custody in solitary in 2018 and 9% in 2017, roughly three times the national average reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The Council for Court Excellence later reported Department data showing an average stay of 49 days in solitary confinement in 2021. The United Nations treats anything beyond 15 consecutive days as torture.

Those numbers are years old, and that is part of the problem. The District does not regularly report how it uses isolation, so what the public knows comes out in pieces. 

Why the next three months matter

This is not the bill's first try. Former Councilmember Mary Cheh introduced the first ERASE Act in 2022. Nadeau brought back a narrower version in 2023, and reintroduced it in 2025. 

Bills that do not pass by the end of a two-year Council period expire. This period closes in early January. Nadeau is not seeking another term, so if the committee does not act this fall, the bill dies again, and the member who carried it will be gone. 

What you can do

If you live in the District, contact Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who chairs the Judiciary committee, and ask her to schedule a hearing on B26-0028. 

A hearing would let people who have lived through isolation in the jail, and the families who lose contact with them, tell the Council what it is like. They have been waiting a long time to be asked.