This story was produced in partnership with the Inside/Out Journalism Project by Type Investigations, which works with incarcerated reporters to produce ambitious, feature-length investigations, with support from the Wayne Barrett Project.

Nathan Gray often found himself pacing his cramped cell, barraged night and day by the sound of other mens screams. The cell was chilly, with a paper-thin mattress, a small shelf for his belongings and a combined sink and toilet. In this small space, he ate his meals, read Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis and slept when he could. When depression overwhelmed him, he had no one to talk to. He didnt tell his family about the conditions he was forced to deal with; he didnt want to worry them.

Gray and his neighbors were permitted to leave their cells for only a handful of reasons each week: to take three showers, for example, or make five 15-minute phone calls, or use an email kiosk to send messages to friends and family on the outside. Sometimes, they were allowed to hang out in one of the holding cells in the unit, known as cages, or in outdoor enclosed spaces.

Grays description of the living conditions in his unit sounds like those experienced by people held in solitary confinement across the U.S.: severe restrictions on movement, moratoriums on physical contact and nearly 24-hour spans spent in cells about the size of bathrooms.

But Gray, who is known as Freedom to friends and family, was not in solitary confinement, according to the New Jersey Department of Corrections. Instead, he lived in one of New Jersey State Prisons Restorative Housing Units, or RHUs, where people are sent as punishment for breaking prison rules.

Gray, who was released from prison at the end of May, spent more than 370 days in RHUs across two facilities, mostly in New Jersey State Prison.

The Department of Corrections created RHUs in response to the 2019 passage of the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act , a law intended to reform the use of solitary confinement in New Jersey correctional facilities. At the time, ICRA was the most progressive solitary confinement reform law in the nation.

The law put strict limits on NJDOCs use of solitary confinement which is referred to as isolated confinement, and is defined as holding a person in a cell or similarly confined holding or living space, alone or with other inmates for 20 or more hours per day with severely restricted activity, movement, and social interaction. The limits included capping the practice at 20 consecutive days or 30 days in a 60-day period. The law also restricted the placement of vulnerable groups, like LGBTQ people, in isolated confinement. Isolated confinement can still be used as a punishment in some cases, but people placed there are afforded some protections, like frequent health exams.

RHUs are meant to be a less restrictive alternative to isolated confinement. Prisoners held in RHUs should have access to recreation, education and out-of-cell activities that allow for social interaction, per departmental regulations . And most importantly, unlike in isolated confinement, people held in RHUs must be offered the opportunity to spend at least four hours each day outside of their cells. People found guilty of violating prison rules can be placed in these units for up to one year per disciplinary incident.

When Gray heard that New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) had signed ICRA, he was surprised and happy, he said, because he knew firsthand how damaging solitary confinement can be. Limiting the amount of time someone can be held in solitary confinement which was typically called administrative segregation, or ad-seg, before ICRA was particularly important to him. Ones mental health can deteriorate at [a] rapid pace being in solitary confinement, he said.

But after the department introduced the RHUs about a year later, Gray was dismayed at how little conditions in his new unit differed from what he had endured in solitary confinement. When I was placed in R.H.U., it was just like being placed in ad-seg, he said.

Gray is far from the only person incarcerated in New Jersey who says their experience in an RHU varied little, if at all, from time spent in administrative segregation before ICRA was implemented. An 18-month investigation by Type Investigations and HuffPost which involved interviews with more than a dozen individuals, including incarcerated people, advocates, and lawyers, and a review of hundreds of pages of public records found that conditions in some of these Restorative Housing Units may qualify as isolated confinement under the departments own definition and defy state regulations, and appear at times to violate the law.

NJDOC did not respond to specific questions about conditions in the RHUs. In an emailed statement, an NJDOC spokesperson said the department continuously evaluates compliance with ICRA as with all statutory requirements, and that it assesses policies and procedures for ensuring incarcerated persons are afforded the required out-of-cell time, opportunities for receiving essential programs and services, and safeguarding staff and incarcerated persons.

But several incarcerated people who have lived in RHUs told us that they were not regularly offered at least four hours of daily out-of-cell time.

Our sources, who have spent time in RHUs in four prisons, also said people in these units often spent their out-of-cell time in confined spaces they compared to dog kennels, and received little to no mental health care.

Alexander Shalom, a senior supervising attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey who was closely involved with drafting the law, expressed profound disappointment when he heard about these allegations.

We tried to write a bill that was tight enough not to give [NJDOC] room to implement it in a way that didnt get to our vision of a more just prison system, Shalom said. But it seems that theyve found ways to violate the law or honor it in the breach.