A state prisons panel is recommending changes to the state’s HALT Act that governs the way state prisons use solitary confinement.

The panel is requesting state legislators make 10 changes, most notably clarification that sexual harassment, lewd conduct, extortion, and attempted escape are behaviors that make someone eligible for solitary confinement greater flexibility in allowing solitary confinement for acts that are heinous and destructive modifications to existing positive incentive programs. It remains to be seen what the state Legislature does when it has the opportunity to take up legislation on the matter in 2026.

But the fact that the panel didn’t outright reject the complaints of corrections officers who argued their jobs were unsafe in part due to the way the HALT Act limited punishments for inmates who misbehave should shine a new light on the wildcat strike that took place in state prisons earlier this year. If corrections officers’ concerns were truly unfounded, then the state panel would have recommended either no changes to the HALT Act or, at the worst, minor changes. But the panel obviously came to the conclusion that the 2021 changes to solitary confinement went too far and needed to be rolled back.

Stop us if you’ve heard that one before.

We hope this rollback is more straightforward than the rollback of 2019 bail reform laws has been. We also hope Democrats who control the governor’s mansion, the state Assembly and the state Senate learn their lesson from both the bail reform rollbacks and the HALT Act panel’s recommendations. There’s a reason foxes don’t guard henhouses. Changing the criminal justice system may be needed, but just as we shouldn’t disregard advocates with concerns over conditions in jails or who have concerns over how bail is used, we also shouldn’t disregard the concerns of public safety officials.

Legislating is a tightrope act between competing interests, and in our opinion the bail reform rollbacks and now proposed rollbacks to the HALT Act are proof that Democrats landed with a resounding thud when they fell off those tightropes.