Lawmakers say Rikers Island remains dangerous to detainees and staff alike, despite some improvements
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From left to right: City Councilmember Mercedes Narcisse, Assemblymembers David Weprin and Kenny Burgos following an unannounced visit to Rikers Island on Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
While some conditions may be improving on Rikers Island, many of the perils of the jail facility where over a dozen people have died this year remain, several lawmakers who visited the island Monday said.
Lawmakers from the state and city level, including several from Queens, made the unannounced visit to Rikers Island on Monday morning and said many of the issues that have plagued the jail complex for decades – but which have become more acute in recent years – have yet to fully subside.
The issues, which include crumbling facilities, violence and a staffing crisis, have continued despite new leadership at the Department of Correction and despite an action plan approved by a federal judge aimed at mapping out a path to improve the jail complex set to close in 2027.
“Things have gotten a little better, but not really – not enough,” said Assemblymember David Weprin, who chairs the legislative body’s Committee on Correction.
The visit from Weprin, Assemblymember Kenny Burgos, State Senator Julia Salazar and City Councilmembers Tiffany Cabán and Mercedes Narcisse coincided with the release of a report from the Board of Correction, the DOC’s oversight body, on 10 of the 16 deaths of incarcerated people to occur on the island last year.
The oversight board found that the deaths – which reached an eight year high last year – often were caused by the failings of correctional officers, exacerbated by the department’s staffing crisis. The deaths occurred when housing units were unstaffed, or when staff otherwise failed to render aid to a dying incarcerated person, the BOC found.
The lawmaker’s visit also coincided with a separate visit from U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who was monitoring the status of the city’s action plan, which was implemented earlier this summer as part of an ongoing consent judgment.
“It is our priority via the Action plan to make our jails safer and more humane for everyone and our staff is leading that effort,” a DOC spokesperson told the Eagle in a statement. “We appreciate the elected officials’ interest in our jails and we will continue to engage them as we work to improve our jail system, which has been neglected for years.”
The elected officials, who visited several facilities on the island, said that conditions varied from one unit to the next but there was often one constant: not enough correctional officers.
“The problem here is that the story is one for one person and one for another,” Burgos said. “You go to one unit and one person will tell you, ‘This unit is solid, we're getting fed here, it's safe here, go check out [another unit],’ and you start to go into these facilities that maybe the correction staff doesn't want you to visit for obvious reasons.”
“That's when you got to kind of see the tale of two cities within Rikers,” he added.
The number of uniformed officers on staff has steadily declined since 2018, according to DOC data. As of July of this year, there were a little more than 7,000 uniformed officers employed by the DOC, data shows. That’s down from the nearly 11,000 uniformed officers on staff in July 2018.
In addition, staff called out sick, were put on medically monitored duty, or went AWOL in droves beginning last summer, fueling the crisis. Officers have begun to return but sick leave levels remain high.
A little over 17 percent of uniformed staff were out sick in July, the latest month data is available for, accounting for a 1.5 percent increase from the same time period last year, according to DOC data.
Around 8 percent of the staff in July were on medically monitored restricted duty, which prevents them from interacting with incarcerated individuals.
The gaps left by the staff crisis have allowed fights between incarcerated individuals to take place unabated, it’s left detainees without access to services ranging from medical appointments to haircuts and it’s created a general sense of abandonment among the detained population, the lawmakers said.
“The main issue at Rikers continues to be staffing,” said Burgos, who represents the island in the Assembly. “The staffing issue is the main issue on this island – there's no accountability.”
“If you don't have people showing up to work, if you don't have people managing the facilities, it falls into disrepair,” he added. “There's no reason why I'm talking to incarcerated folks and they're telling me, ‘I’d rather be [in an] upstate [correctional facility].’”
A group of lawmakers who visited Rikers Island on Monday said while some conditions have improved, a lack of correctional officer staffing and crumbling facilities remain “deeply” concerning. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
The lawmakers said that incarcerated individuals told them that they were lacking basic services, many of which have been either entirely suspended, scaled back or ignored since the start of the pandemic.
Included in those services were the distribution of cleaning supplies, laundry services, access to the barbershop and medical appointments, which a judge recently said the DOC had failed its mandate to deliver.
“We are in the richest country in the world, and yet we are housing incarcerated human beings and the hygiene, the sanitation part of it, is not being addressed,” Narcisse said. “It should not be that when you're incarcerated you have limited access to basic things like toothpaste and toothbrushes. I have folks that tell me that they don't have power, I have folks that told me that they can't change their clothes.”
Cabán and Salazar separately visited the Rose M. Singer Center, which primarily houses detained women. Cabán, who represents the island in the City Council, said some of the issues seen throughout the jail complex were more pronounced in the facility.
“Rosie's was deeply, deeply concerning,” Cabán told the Eagle. “While it was clear that people were seeing floor officers more often in the other facilities, Rosie's clearly is not getting the same kind of staffing support.”
The lawmaker said incarcerated individuals in the Rose M. Singer Center told her that they’d often gone days without seeing an officer on the floor, resulting in a complete lack of movement among the incarcerated population there. Detainees rarely have access to recreation time, or can be escorted to medical appointments in a timely manner, Cabán said.
The lack of staff has also led to a proliferation of fights among detainees, the councilmember said.
Overall, stabbings and slashings have increased by over 40 percent in recent months, when compared to the same period last year. Fights between incarcerated individuals, however, have decreased by around 20 percent, as have use of force incidents, DOC data shows.
But Cabán and the other lawmakers said that a handful of officers, specifically those on the Strategic Response Team and the Strategic Search Team, have become more aggressive.
“They kept complaining that…the SRT unit was coming in and tossing their bunks two to three times a day sometimes, and that they were coming in and they were being really rough, and that they would very quickly escalate to spray folks [with pepper spray],” Cabán said.
The visit comes a day before the BOC returns from its summer break and is scheduled to hold its monthly meeting.
BOC officials are likely to discuss their recent report, which focused on four drug related deaths and six suicides that occured on the island in 2021.
The visit also comes around a month before the city and DOC is scheduled to appear before federal Judge Laura Swain to discuss the progress its made it’s action plan.
Should the city not be progressing in a way that satisfies Swain, it could again face the prospect of a federal receivership – a court order that could potentially see the everyday management of Rikers Island handed over to a federal authority.
While some of the data supports the idea that conditions are improving, Cabán, who campaigned on the idea of decarceration, said she remains unconvinced.
“By the numbers it looks like the numbers for [staff] attendance are creeping up but if I'm measuring by what people told me, like lacking access to very, very basic human necessities, it is not enough,” Cabán said.
