New York Codes, Rules and Regulations
Title 7 - DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND COMMUNITY SUPERVISION
Chapter VI - Special Housing Units
Part 320 - Residential Mental Health Units
Section 320.3 - Behavioral Health Unit

A behavioral health unit (BHU) is a program that includes a separate housing location within a correctional facility designed to address the corrections-based therapeutic treatment of incarcerated individuals currently diagnosed with a serious mental illness who, due to their behavior, are serving a confinement sanction. These incarcerated individuals have displayed a marked inability to conform their behavior to societal and/or institutional standards of conduct. They present with a complex interplay of antisocial behaviors and psychological factors that have resulted in their not having benefited from habilitation efforts in the community or rehabilitation efforts during a series of institutional placements. The unit is designed to meet the therapeutic needs of seriously mentally ill incarcerated individuals, while maintaining adequate safety and security on the unit. Although a BHU is not operated as a disciplinary housing unit, in light of the security concerns associated with the behaviors that resulted in their confinement and other sanctions, incarcerated individuals that pose a significant or unreasonable risk to the safety of incarcerated persons, staff or the facility may be subject to limitations on the quantity and type of property they are permitted to have , in order to maintain security and order on the unit. All incarcerated individuals housed in a BHU are offered four hours of structured out-of-cell therapeutic programming and/or mental health treatment along with three hours out-of-cell congregate programming, services, treatment, recreation, activities, and/or meals, with an additional one hour of recreation for a total of seven hours out-of-cell on a daily basis.