The city's jails commissioner says he'll eliminate solitary confinement for 16- and 17-year-old inmates by the end of this year.
Commissioner Joseph Ponte announced the proposed policy change in a memo to Mayor de Blasio last week.
Ponte has said publicly his goal was to end 23-hour confinement for adolescent inmates who break jailhouse rules.
Adolescent inmates account for about 300 of the roughly 11,500 inmates in the nation's second largest jail system. There are some 530 inmates daily in solitary and around 50 of them are teens.
The Justice Department said last month that young inmates too often are placed in solitary on Rikers Island.
The watchdog agency that oversees jails is in the process of changing city rules on how solitary is used.
