NYAPRS Note: The reforms outlined in the below article do not include mention of plans to increase mental health supports or training at Rikers, however a previous reform aimed to keep people with psychiatric diagnoses out of solitary confinement has already been implemented. Advocates recognize that improving conditions at Rikers and in all forensic settings may reduce the traumatic impacts of institutionalization on overall mental health, but we expect that policymakers can further build in protections for persons with disabilities, both seen and unseen.
Deal Is Near on Far-Reaching Reforms at Rikers, Including a Federal Monitor
New York Times; Benjamin Weiser, 6/18/2015
New York City officials have tentatively agreed to sweeping reforms that would remake Rikers Island, including the appointment of a federal monitor to oversee the jail complex, explicit prohibitions against guards’ striking prisoners in the head and even the introduction of body cameras worn by guards.
Other reforms city officials are poised to endorse include the development of a computerized system to better track the use of force by correction officers, the implementation of an early warning program to flag guards who use force against inmates three or more times in six months, injuring at least one of them, and the installation of 8,000 new surveillance cameras throughout the jail complex.
The measures are part of a far-reaching legal settlement that has been largely agreed upon, after months of negotiation, by lawyers for the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio and the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, as well as the Legal Aid Society and a group of private lawyers who in 2011 filed a class-action lawsuit against the city, which Mr. Bharara’s office joined in December, according to people who have been briefed on the talks.
They cautioned that there was no final deal and that certain remaining disputes could still get in the way of a settlement. But Mr. Bharara’s office and the city’s Law Department told a federal magistrate judge two weeks ago that they expected a deal to be completed by Monday, June 22.
Some of the measures that lawyers for the city have tentatively agreed to would have seemed unimaginable as recently as early 2014, underscoring the suddenness with which Rikers reform has leapt to the forefront of the agenda of the de Blasio administration over the last year.
The city’s Department of Correction has been under extraordinary scrutiny after articles by The New York Times, The Associated Press and The New Yorker, as well as reports by the city’s Investigation Department, documented widespread brutality, corruption and dysfunction at Rikers.
In August, Mr. Bharara’s office, after a two-and-a-half-year investigation, issued a blistering report that found a “deep-seated culture of violence” directed toward adolescent inmates at Rikers, and a systematic deprivation of their civil rights.
Saying he was frustrated with the pace of change at Rikers, Mr. Bhararaannounced plans in December to sue the city and seek court-ordered reforms. His office joined in an existing class-action lawsuit on brutality at Rikers, Nunez v. City of New York, filed by the Legal Aid Society and two law firms, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady and Ropes & Gray.
There have been “dozens and dozens” of negotiating sessions, a city lawyer said recently in court. The sessions have been attended at times by Mr. Bharara; Zachary W. Carter, the corporation counsel for New York City; and Joseph Ponte, the correction commissioner, whom Mr. Bharara, at a news conference last week about charges being filed in a 2010 beating death of a Rikers inmate, praised as “dedicated to the cause of reform.” But Mr. Bharara has also expressed impatience with the grinding progress of the talks.
“Every day that goes by where we don’t have enforceable and enduring reform at Rikers Island is one day too many,” he said.
Even as bigger issues were resolved, some of the obstacles in recent weeks were over finer points. The city objected, for example, to a provision that would require the Correction Department to notify United States prosecutors whenever it referred a potentially criminal occurrence involving the use of force to the city’s Investigation Department.
The agreement that now appears close would seem to address many of Mr. Bharara’s concerns as well as those voiced by Mr. de Blasio, who, when he visited the jail in March, vowed to make Rikers a “national model of what is right again.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. de Blasio, in a statement Thursday night, said the agreement would be “a major step” toward his administration’s goal of reducing violence in the jails. She added, “We fully expect a successful conclusion to this process within a few days.”
The correction commissioner, Mr. Ponte, who came into the job a little over a year ago, has already undertaken major changes that track some areas of agreement between the parties. In December, for example, Mr. Ponte ended solitary confinement for 16- and 17-year-olds at Rikers. The tentative agreement mandates doing just that, and would also prohibit placing 18-year-old inmates with serious mental illness in isolation.
Mr. Ponte, in a recent interview with The Times, expressed openness to the idea of a federal monitor, a remedy he once said he had hoped to avoid. “I don’t think a monitor hinders anything we want to do,” Mr. Ponte said.
The city already has court-appointed monitors overseeing reforms in the Police Department’s stop, question and frisk policies and the Fire Department’s hiring practices.
Under the proposed Rikers agreement, the monitor would have broad access to the jails and records, and the ability to interview inmates confidentially and to speak with staff members outside the presence of their colleagues or supervisors. The monitor would review all policies adopted under the settlement, including a new training curriculum for the staff.
The monitor would report to the federal judge in Manhattan who is overseeing the Nunez lawsuit, Laura Taylor Swain, and the monitor, in publicly filed reports, would regularly evaluate the status of the department’s compliance with the settlement. Judge Swain would be asked to approve any settlement.
The agreement itself would end only when the court finds that the city has achieved and maintained substantial compliance with the terms of the settlement for two years.
A critical part of the proposed deal is a requirement that the Correction Department, in consultation with the monitor, develop a comprehensive new policy on the use of force by guards.
The policy would emphasize that staff members have a duty to protect inmates from harm, and delineate what are — and are not — permissible uses of force. There would be an explicit ban, for example, on blows to the head, face, groin, neck, kidneys and spinal column, as well as kicks and chokeholds. The only exception would be for guards who believe they are in imminent danger of death or serious injury.
Force could not be used to punish inmates or retaliate against them, or to respond to an inmate’s insults or threats. Guards could not cause inmates to assault others, a major problem in recent years. And there would be rules on how and when force may be used, and escalated, if necessary. For the officers flagged for repeated use of force, jail wardens would be required to review the officers’ histories to determine whether they need additional guidance or counseling.
Also, correction officers would be required as part of the agreement to prepare their reports independently when force is used against an inmate; collusion would be prohibited.
Just last week, when Mr. Bharara announced charges against a current correction officer and two former officers in the beating death of a 52-year-old inmate, Ronald Spear, in a Rikers medical unit, the prosecutor’s office also accused the defendants of lying in official reports about the episode.
Mr. Bharara’s office said in its August report that officers and supervisors used coded phrases like “hold it down” to pressure inmates into not reporting assaults, and that some civilian staff members, like doctors and teachers, had failed to report abuse of prisoners and faced retaliation when they did. The proposed agreement would require a medical staff member who suspected an inmate had been injured because of force that had not been disclosed to make a report, and the Correction Department’s investigation division would have to open an immediate inquiry.
In addition to installing thousands of additional video surveillance cameras, the agreement would mandate, as part of a pilot project, that 100 body cameras be distributed to officers and supervisors in parts of the jail complex that are prone to violence.
The experiment would be re-evaluated after a year to determine if it should be expanded or ended.
Another provision would require the use of hand-held video cameras to record the removals of prisoners from cells — often a violent process — and other actions. Such recordings would have to be continuous, and any breaks would have to be documented and explained. Staff members wearing or carrying cameras who repeatedly failed to capture sensitive incidents on video would be referred for discipline.
Much of the proposed agreement focuses on bettering conditions for teenage inmates, which was the primary focus of Mr. Bharara’s report last August.
Additional video cameras would have to be installed in the jail for teenage inmates, the Robert N. Davoren Center, with a goal of ensuring total camera coverage of areas that are accessible to 16- and 17-year-olds.
The agreement also pushes the city to look into taking teenage inmates off Rikers Island completely. City officials, in consultation with the monitor, would be required to make their best efforts to find a new location for inmates under age 18. The site should have access to recreation and educational services. And it should be accessible by public transportation, to make it easier for family members to visit.
The city would be required, in periodic reports to the monitor, to detail its search process, the places under consideration and how long it would take before they would be available for housing inmates. But the proposal would allow the city to report that after a diligent search, it could not find a suitable location.