S the State Legislature considers reinstating the death penalty, lost in the debate is any mention of the appalling conditions that are often inflicted on prisoners sentenced to death.

Since the death penalty was re-enacted during Gov. George E. Pataki's first term, seven people have been condemned to die, but none have been executed. Prisoners on death row have been kept in virtual solitary confinement while they await the outcome of their appeals, exoneration or execution. A recent study by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, of which I am a co-author, has found that the conditions on New York's death row are among the harshest in the nation.

According to the study, each condemned man in New York is locked in his isolated 78 square-foot space for 23 hours each day. Each cell contains only a toilet, a sink, a bed, a mattress and a pillow. The cells are not air-conditioned and fans are not permitted. All meals are given to inmates in their cells during the daytime shift, which means that inmates go more than 16 hours without food. The inmates cannot see other prisoners from their cells and are not permitted to hold prison jobs, attend programs or engage in organized activities. When a prisoner is allowed out of his cell for his one hour a day, he is confined to a solitary cage of about 2,000 square feet, aptly called a dog run.

Compounding the isolation, visits are greatly restricted and take place in booths separated by a plexiglass barrier that prevents physical contact. Inmates are limited to two 10-minute phone calls per week.

Judge James L. Dennis of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, has said that restrictive death row conditions are "enough to weaken even the strongest individual." Psychologists who have studied such conditions have concluded that they can lead to severe psychological consequences, including withdrawal, hopelessness, hallucinations, aggression, rage, paranoia and psychosis.

Death row inmates who may be rendered insane by these conditions may no longer be deemed competent when the time comes to execute them. There is also the possibility that inmates will be driven by these conditions to abandon their appeals and volunteer for execution, a phenomenon that occurs with more than 10 percent of all inmates on death row nationally.

And, of course, some prisoners subjected to these conditions might actually be innocent - last month, an Ohio inmate who was convicted in 1985 became the 119th innocent person to be freed from death row since 1973.

Not only are conditions harsh, but the state is also highly secretive about how it runs death row. The Department of Correctional Services has refused to open death row to inspection even to representatives of the New York City bar association asserting undefined security concerns. When the death penalty law was passed, the Legislature and Governor Pataki gave the department the authority to close death row to inspection by judges, members of the Legislature, district attorneys, ministers in towns where prisons are located and even by the governor himself.

Inmates on death row are not the only ones who must endure these horrible conditions. New York confines approximately 5,000 other inmates by locking them into their cells for 23 hours a day. Approximately 2,800 of these inmates are housed in disciplinary lockdown units, some of which approach the severity and degree of isolation of the notorious "supermax" prisons in other states.

The conditions in these units are analogous to those on death row. The toll exacted by these conditions has not been fully calculated, but some things are known. A recent review of public data by lawyers from the Prisoners' Rights Project of the New York Legal Aid Society found that from 1998 to 2001, 30 percent to 50 percent of prison suicides occurred within these harsh confinement units, which house less than 8 percent of the total prison population.

There is never justification for prison conditions that cause mental torture. And it is a mistake to think that the conditions do not directly affect us. Many inmates will some day return to be our neighbors, some even from death row. New York State should not be in the business of creating dreadful conditions that breed psychotics who then return to society.

Given the extreme conditions of death row, one might expect that the inmates held there are exceptionally dangerous. But they are not.

The bar association study found that prisoners on death row are among New York's most cooperative inmates. From 1996, when New York's death row was established, to 2001, there was not a single reported incident of violence, an attempted escape or even a serious security violation, like the possession of a banned item that could be made into weapons.

The time has come to correct these problems. No longer should any areas of the New York prison system be off limits to observers. Governor Pataki should ensure that state prisons, including death row, are open to inspection by responsible persons outside the system. And legislation should be enacted that ensures that the harsh isolation and brutal conditions that are inflicted on death row inmates are stopped.

Whether or not the death penalty is reinstated in New York, death row conditions and the ill treatment of thousands of other inmates in supermax units need to be part of the debate. We cannot close our eyes to their suffering. The Legislature and the governor should immediately undertake reforms to ensure that New York State prisoners are no longer subjected to what is essentially state-sponsored torture.