Monitor says Rikers is getting worse as detainee becomes 9th to die this year
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Hours after Manish Kunwar became the ninth person to die in Department of Correction custody this year, the federal monitor said conditions inside the jail complex have not improved and are unlikely to do so under current leadership. AP file photo by Seth Wenig
By Jacob Kaye
On the same day a 27-year-old man became the ninth person to die in Department of Correction custody this year, the federal monitor tracking conditions on Rikers Island said reforming the notorious jail complex is a prospect that is “falling even further out of reach.”
Hours after Manish Kunwar was found dead inside the Eric M. Taylor Center on Rikers Island, federal monitor Steve J. Martin said in a scheduled report filed with a federal judge that the Department of Correction has done little in the past month to show that it’s capable of reforming the jail where 44 people have died dating back to the start of 2021.
In fact, conditions have only gotten worse and those charged with keeping detainees and DOC employees safe have avoided transparency and failed to take ownership over the current dangerous conditions, the monitor alleged.
Kunwar’s death, coupled with the report, have only intensified calls for federal Judge Laura Swain, who is overseeing the ongoing civil rights case known as Nunez v the City of New York, to strip control of Rikers Island away from the city and hand it over to a court-appointed receiver.
But before Martin’s report could hit Swain’s desk on Thursday morning, Kunwar was found unresponsive inside the cell he was being held in. According to the Department of Correction, Kunwar was pronounced dead around 6:20 a.m.
He had been incarcerated at Rikers for a week.
The DOC did not provide any additional information about the circumstances surrounding Kunwar’s death, which is currently under investigation by the Board of Correction, the Office of the Medical Examiner and the State Attorney General’s office.
In June 2022, Kunwar, who struggled from mental illness, was charged with robbery after he allegedly pulled a knife on a man in Corona, stealing $1,200 from him, according to reporting by the Daily News, the first outlet to report Kunwar’s death.
Kunwar, who was homeless, then skipped a court date, left for a Baltimore psychiatric facility while suffering from substance abuse and then made his way to Delaware, the outlet reported.
There, he told law enforcement that he was suicidal and was subsequentley taken into custody before being extradited to Queens, where he was charged with robbery, bail jumping and other charges last week, according to the News.
“We are devastated and outraged by the news of the passing of yet another Legal Aid client at Rikers Island,” the Legal Aid Society, whose attorneys were representing Kunwar, said in a statement on Thursday. “Mr. Kunwar’s case yet again highlights the harm of incarceration in lieu of treatment. If our client had access to the services he needed and stable housing, today’s tragedy could have been avoided.”
“The carceral system is no place for people struggling with mental or substance abuse issues, and all criminal legal system stakeholders must pursue alternatives that prioritize community-based resources over the confines of a cage,” the public defense firm added.
In their statement, the Legal Aid Society also said that the “DOC’s continuous failure to ensure the well-being of those New Yorkers in its custody and inability to administer basic jail functions is unacceptable.”
The agency’s ability to reform the troubled jail was also called into serious question by Martin on Thursday.
The monitor expressed little faith that the DOC is capable of fixing violent conditions in the jail or keeping its detainees and staff safe.
Though the monitor did not explicitly call for receivership in the report, he made it known that extreme action needs to be taken to get violence in the jail under control, and blamed the DOC and its leadership for being unable to meet the needs of those who work and are detained there.
“The City and Department have repeatedly and consistently demonstrated they are incapable of effectively directing and managing the multilayered and multifaceted reform effort, and continuing on the current path is not likely to alter the present course in any meaningful way,” the monitor said in his report.
“The Monitoring Team remains ready to serve as a resource to support the development of a structure that is capable of this task,” the report continues.
The latest report from the monitor is a crucial one – it’s the first since Swain allowed for federal receivership proceedings to begin.
On August 10, Swain called the conditions on Rikers “tragic” and “unacceptable,” and pushed back on claims from DOC Commissioner Louis Molina that conditions on Rikers have been improving.
“Turning Rikers around has never presented an easy task,” Swain said in August. “Although some progress is being made, it's not being made at a rate that is commensurate with the perils that are being presented.”
“The people incarcerated at Rikers are at a grave risk of immediate harm,” the judge added.
As a result, Swain allowed the Legal Aid Society, which represents the plaintiff class in the decade-old case, to begin to make a motion to hold the DOC and the city in contempt of court for failing to comply with the consent judgment reached in the case in 2015.
According to the monitor, the DOC has done little to come into compliance in the two months since the court appearance.
“The Monitoring Team remains extremely concerned about the current state of affairs,” the report reads. “The jails remain dangerous and unsafe, characterized by a pervasive, imminent risk of harm to both people in custody and staff.”
“The Monitoring Team is disturbed by evidence that suggests the alarming conditions reported to the Court during the August 10, 2023 Status Conference have only worsened,” the monitor added.
Among the monitor’s concerns are poor security practices, staffing issues, a lack of ability for the DOC to control housing units, failures to punish staff who commit misconduct, and “continuing lapses in timely internal incident reporting and Monitoring Team notification, and continuing efforts to impede transparency and obfuscate the work of the Monitoring Team.”
As conditions on Rikers have deteriorated, so has the relationship between Molina and Martin.
Earlier this summer, Martin alleged that Molina and DOC brass had failed to report five serious incidents, including two that led to detainee deaths. After one of those incidents, Molina allegedly asked the monitor not to include it in a report out of concern that it would make the department look bad.
A similar situation occurred on Sept. 5, according to Thursday’s report. Following a recent demotion, Molina told the monitor “that he should refrain from making ‘glowing representations’ about the individual in the monitor’s report or the commissioner would ‘have to get into a public back and forth.’”
After Molina attempted to influence the monitor’s reporting, Martin asked for a written explanation of the demotion, but Molina refused, allegedly telling the monitor that the demotion was “not Nunez related,” according to the report.
“The Commissioner continues to take actions that appear counter to his stated intent to be transparent and work with the Monitor,” the report read.
The DOC will next appear before Swain in late November.
Should contempt and receivership proceedings continue, it’s unlikely Swain makes a ruling until after February 2024, the final court appearance in the current motion schedule.
But should Swain ultimately order a federal receiver to be put in place, a new legal saga would begin. Working out the details of the receiver’s duties and powers could take months before one is implemented.
The Department of Correction did not respond to request for comment concerning the monitor’s report on Thursday.
