DOC fails to track detainee intake process, attorneys claim
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In a motion filed in federal court this week, the Legal Aid Society alleges that the Department of Correction has failed to track how long detainees are spending in intake cells. AP file photo by Bebeto Matthews
By Jacob Kaye
The Legal Aid Society on Thursday claimed that the city’s Department of Correction was in violation of a court order that requires them to house people incarcerated on Rikers Island quickly, court documents show.
In a motion of contempt filed by the public defense group this week, the Legal Aid Society claims that the DOC has failed in its court-ordered mandate to track and process people out of intake cells within 24-hours of entering the city’s custody. The motion was filed in federal court in relation to Nunez v. City of New York, the ongoing case that nearly saw the city lose its right to manage Rikers Island to a federal receiver last year.
While attorneys with the Legal Aid Society currently and have previously alleged that detainees are being held in intake for longer than 24 hours – a violation of the order – the motion filed this week claims that the DOC has failed to even track how long each person stays in the often crowded and poorly-kept cells.
“The department’s systems for intake tracking are unreliable and unusable,” Kayla Simpson, a staff attorney with the Prisoners’ Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society, told the Eagle. “We had raised this with them over the course of 2022 and have not reached a resolution.”
“I think the purpose of this motion is to say, ‘You can't just not implement things for this length of time when you're under court order to do so very specifically,’” Simpson said. “There has to be some accountability.”
The DOC’s intake cells, which could be used to temporarily hold newly-admitted detainees or detainees returning from court, a specialized medical visit or are used to hold detainees transferring to a new facility, have long been scrutinized by public defense attorneys, criminal justice advocates, the city’s Board of Correction, judges, elected officials who tour the facility and the federal monitor appointed to oversee the jail complex.
In October, records obtained by the public defense group and the Board of Correction, the DOC’s oversight body, purported to show that DOC staffers had tampered with an intake tracking system to eliminate all instances where a person was held for over 24 hours.
Simpson said on Thursday that even with anecdotal evidence and reports from clients alleging that the DOC is not moving people out of intake quickly enough, it’s hard to show the department is violating the order because they’ve failed to create a system that accurately tracks intake times.
“We can't even know [how long people are held in intake],” Simpson said. “That should be infuriating to everyone – I can't even tell you reliably how long people are in these disgusting cells that lack very basic services.”
In December, one of the Legal Aid Society’s clients was being held in an intake area throughout the duration of his jury trial, the motion claims. Appearing in court during the day, he’d be taken back to Rikers Island and held in the temporary cell.
The defendant claimed that while being held in intake, he was unable to shower or sleep and would have to appear before the jury looking disheveled and unwell.
“This is his life,” Simpson said. “He didn't want to face the people who would decide his fate like that.”
“That impacted his ability to participate in this criminal case,” Simpson added. “The entire reason that people are held on bail is to ensure that they come to court and that they can participate in their defense.”
When reached for comment, a spokesperson with the DOC directed the Eagle to the city’s Law Department.
A spokesperson for the Law Department said: “We will demonstrate in our response that a finding of contempt is not warranted.”
In the motion, the Legal Aid Society asks that federal Judge Laura Swain, who is overseeing the case, order the DOC to provide live access to the dashboard system they use to track new admissions.
They also ask that the agency be ordered to issue weekly reports on the intake process to be shared directly with defense attorneys with clients in Rikers Island. Additionally, they are calling for regular updates on the DOC’s efforts to use its intra-facility tracking system by March.
The order the attorneys claim the DOC is in violation of was issued by Swain in November 2021, and states that the DOC implement “a reliable system to track and record the amount of time any incarcerated individual is held in Intake and any instance when an individual remains in Intake for more than 24 hours.”
The federal monitor, the BOC and DOC Commissioner Louis Molina have repeatedly said that the department’s intake tracking system, particularly its intra-facility system, has not been used properly.
Last fall, the Legal Aid Society filed a motion calling on Swain to institute a federal receivership on Rikers Island – a judicial order that could see the DOC turn over management duties to an authority answerable only to the court. Though Swain denied the motion, citing the DOC’s efforts to improve conditions in the jail complex where 19 people died last year, she said the issue of receivership could be reconsidered in the spring of this year.
