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Monitor finds Rikers jails are as dysfunctional as ever, but gives leaders a thumbs up
By
Matt Katz
Published Oct 28, 2022
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NYC Board of Correction via FOIL request
By
Matt Katz
Published Oct 28, 2022
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Rikers Island jails continue to be “patently unsafe” and “trapped in a state of persistent dysfunction,” but there are “a few glimmers of progress,” a federal monitor overseeing the city jail system reported Friday night.
Federal monitor Steve Martin and his seven-person staff, funded by city taxpayers, have investigated and evaluated progress at the city jails since 2015, after a lawsuit over violence and excessive use of force by officers led to a consent decree creating the monitorship. But despite that intervention, the monitor’s latest report shows that the number of use of force incidents by officers resulting in serious injuries has “increased significantly” since he arrived seven years earlier. The number of slashings and stabbings is also exponentially higher.
“The conditions in the jail remain dangerously unsafe and the Monitoring Team remains gravely concerned about the alarming number of in-custody deaths, violence among people in custody, lack of an effective restrictive housing model, and various facets of the [the Correction Department’s] use of force practices and operational practices,” the report said.
The problems are so deeply entrenched and complicated that no single person, power, or authority will be able to fix them on the rapid schedule that the gravity of the problems demand.
Rikers Island Monitoring Team report
In fact, despite the years of monitoring, Martin’s team concluded that “nearly every facet of the jails’ operations, procedures and practices needs to be dismantled and reconstituted,” and there must be “an all-encompassing cultural and behavioral change among thousands of Staff for whom poor practice has been embedded and normalized for decades.”
That may seem like an impossible challenge, but Martin expressed confidence that new leadership at the city jails -- led by Mayor Eric Adams’ appointee Correction Commissioner Louis Molina, and a senior leadership team Molina has hired in recent months -- can implement such changes.
“The Department’s leadership team has demonstrated their understanding of both the big picture of what must be achieved and the nuance and sequence of all the things that must change to achieve it,” the report said.
In that way, Martin appeared to rebuke a growing chorus of political leaders and lawyers who want a federal judge to bring in someone with more juice than a monitor -- a federal receiver -- to run the jails, wrest them from city control, and use sweeping authority to right the ship. The report hinted at the appointment of a receiver being ill-advised: “The problems are so deeply entrenched and complicated that no single person, power, or authority will be able to fix them on the rapid schedule that the gravity of the problems demand.”
Politicians and prisoner advocacy groups gather for a rally and press conference outside of the main entrance to Rikers Island earlier this year regarding the poor conditions in the jail including lack of medical care, access to mail, and freezing temperatures.
The possibility of a federal receiver could be considered as early as Nov. 17, when the federal judge overseeing the consent decree holds a key hearing. The Legal Aid Society, which is the plaintiff in the lawsuit that brought about the monitor, supports the appointment of a receiver. In a statement on Friday, Legal Aid said it was clear that Department of Correction leaders “have continued to fall short of remedying the serious and deadly harm our clients face."
Seventeen people have died in city custody or shortly after being released this year, which is the highest death rate in city jails in more than a decade.
The monitor’s report noted that major jail systems around the country are also seeing higher rates of deaths of people in custody, but it slammed the New York’s Department of Correction for failing to properly investigate in-custody deaths and staff for failing to render aid when people harm themselves. The monitoring team said it is hiring an additional “expert on self-harm to develop suicide prevention policies.”
One major issue continues to plague the system: staffing shortages, largely due to attrition and an excessive use of sick leave, which have led to a “constant disruption” of basic services, like recreation and laundry, according to the monitor.
The progress, according to the monitor? Fights and assaults on staff are down in 2022 compared to last year. And broken cell doors are being replaced.
“We are proud of the work we have done in the past 10 months and appreciate that the Monitor recognized our progress,” Molina said in a statement Friday night. “We look forward to continuing the Monitor and the leadership teams’ close work together, as we continue to assemble an accomplished executive staff and move the jails forward on a pathway that improves conditions for all who work and live here; they deserve nothing less.”
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Rikers Island
Matt Katz
Matt Katz is a former WNYC & Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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