New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an emergency executive order Tuesday directing his administration to come up with a plan limiting the use of solitary confinement on Rikers Island.

The union for correction officers pushed back, saying the move puts the lives of everyone at Rikers at risk.

Local Law 42 bans prolonged solitary confinement in NYC jails

The mayor says the city's Law Department and the Department of Correction must develop a plan within 45 days that implements Local Law 42, which bans prolonged solitary confinement in city jails.

It passed the City Council in 2024, but faced delays and legal challenges by Mayor Eric Adams, who cited safety concerns.

"This requires us to develop a plan not only with our local partners but also our federal partners to ensure that we can live up to the law that was passed here in this city and finally start to showcase our ability to deliver safety and justice in tandem," Mamdani said at an unrelated event Tuesday.

The law limits isolation to four hours and mandates the city find alternatives.

Anisah Sabur said she's a survivor of solitary confinement who now works with New York's Humane Alternatives to Long Term Solitary Confinement Act, also known as HALT.

"As the jail got overcrowded, they began to just use them for solitary confinement, where people were spending days, weeks and months in these cells," she said. "And once you're there, it's like out of sight, out of mind. People don't get the attention that they need."

Solitary confinement supporters cited safety concerns in jails

The president of the correction officers' union said in a statement, in part, "We use punitive segregation exclusively for those inmates who have assaulted correction officers and non-violent inmates. Last year alone, there were nearly 700 assaults on our correction officers, that included 26 sexual assaults. There were 158 slashing incidents ... These numbers would be much higher if we had no deterrents."

"One of the good things about solitary confinement is this -- if you have a violent inmate, you now remove them from the environment in which they perpetuate violence that would be," former NYPD Lt. Darrin Porcher said.

Mamdani would not say whether he is keeping the current DOC commissioner, Lynelle Maginley-Liddie. In the past, she has said that ending solitary confinement would have significant detrimental impacts to those who work in the jail and those who are in custody.

The DOC did not immediately return to CBS News New York's request for a comment.