Advocates call on city to meet hunger striking detainees’ demands
/
City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan joined fellow lawmakers and advocates to call on the Department of Correction to meet the demands of a group of detainees who went on a hunger strike to protest jail conditions. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
Advocates and lawmakers stood at the foot of the bridge leading to Rikers Island Thursday and called for the city to respond to the requests of incarcerated people who held a hunger strike inside the jail this week.
Members of the Fortune Society, Freedom Agenda and Exodus Transitional Community joined City Councilmembers Shekar Krishnan, Gale Brewer and Carmen De La Rosa to call on the Department of Correction to meet the demands made by hunger striking detainees who say they’ve had enough of the deteriorating conditions in the jail complex.
“Rikers Island is the most urgent humanitarian and civil rights crisis of our city,” said Krishnan, who represents Elmhurst and Jackson Heights. “We stand together – [detainees’] demands are reasonable requests for the respect of basic human rights, access to medical and mental health care, access to recreational time, to make sure that they have access to a law library, to make sure they have access to their constitutionally guaranteed right to counsel.”
“The Department of Corrections must exceed the demands of all the hunger strikers right now, and all of those who are incarcerated in this complex,” the councilmember added.
It’s estimated that around 200 people housed in the Robert N. Davoren Center on Rikers Island engaged in the hunger strike, which a DOC spokesperson says has ended.
New York County Defender Services attorney Christopher Boyle was the first to sound the alarm on the strike and said Thursday that those participating were protesting a lack of heat in the facility, programming cutbacks and other poor conditions that have been documented extensively by incarcerated individuals, advocates, attorneys and federal oversight officials in the past year, the deadliest on Rikers since 2013.
“This is a pretty difficult moment,” Boyle said. “This island is a reflection of all of us – what we stand for, what we value, what we see as the future of criminal justice here in New York City. And I have to say, it's a pretty bad image.”
The attorney said that it’s time the city lose it’s ownership over the jail complex. Steve Martin, the federal monitor appointed to oversee the jail, lambasted the DOC’s ability to manage the jail in multiple reports last year. Despite increases in violence in the jails, Martin’s criticisms weren’t all entirely new and Boyle says enough is enough.
“I think that we're at the end of the federal oversight,” Boyle said. “I think that what has to happen is the federal government has to come in and take control over the island. They have lost control over what's going on. I don't think any of us trust them with what they're doing.”
Boyle added that he doesn’t expect much change from new mayor, Eric Adams, and his new DOC commissioner, Louis Molina, who, in some of his first days rolled back correctional officers’ sick leave policy and fired Sarena Townsend, an investigator with the department who was cut after refusing to dismiss a couple thousands cases against officers, according to the Daily News.
Darren Mack, the co-director of the Freedom Agenda, said that he worries the city will respond to the hunger strike the way New York State responded to striking incarcerated people at Attica Correctional Facility in 1971, an incident that led to the deaths of over 40 people, including 33 detainees.
“We don't want the state to respond in a retaliatory way, because that's what they do when you organize, highlight and amplify the conditions of confinement that are inhumane,” Mack said. “We don't want the state to respond like it did almost 51 years ago at Attica state prison by brutalizing, killing, and torturing people that's trying to address the conditions.”
Despite the calls of advocates and lawmakers, the Department of Correction says the hunger strike never existed.
“There is no ‘hunger strike’ and there never was one,” a DOC spokesperson said. “A group of detainees were refusing institutional food while eating commissary meals the whole time.”
“The warden engaged with them and they resumed eating from the kitchen two days ago,” the spokesperson added.
During an unrelated press conference on Thursday, Mayor Adams acknowledged the existence of the hunger strike and said that he had been in daily communication with Molina about the steps being taken to end it.
“I have a briefing every morning with my commissioner at the Department of Correction that I am extremely proud to have on the island,” Adams said. “I was extremely impressed that he met with the inmates and others to find out what the issues were and why they were on a hunger strike.”
Calling Rikers a “failed correctional facility,” Adams said many of the crises on Rikers Island could be boiled down to failed communication.
“[Molina] is looking to resolve those issues and have a real conversation on the ground and I’m just really pleased with the way that he’s handling the situation,” the mayor said.
The mayor added that the new commissioner is planning to give a State of Correction speech at some point soon, though he did not provide further details.
