City fails to offer school to young detainees on Rikers, LAS says
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The Legal Aid Society is calling on a judge to reappoint an independent monitor in a class action lawsuit that resulted in a court order demanding the city offer young detainees high school classes on Rikers Island. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
Young detainees on Rikers Island are being deprived of their right to take high school classes while behind bars, the Legal Aid Society alleged in a new filing in federal court this week.
The public defense firm filed a motion in federal court on Wednesday, kicking off the process for potentially getting an independent monitor reappointed in a decades-old case known as Handberry et al. v. Thompson et al.
A 2016 court order in the case required that the Department of Correction and Department of Education provide at least three hours of educational services every school day to eligible detainees. It also required that detainees being held in restrictive housing units be offered the same education they would receive if they were being held in a general housing unit.
But the Legal Aid Society says that the two agencies are defying the court order, and that without a monitor overseeing the DOC and DOE’s education program, the implementation of high school classes has “dramatically worsened.”
“It seems when left to their own devices, when not being watched, they violate the court order flagrantly,” Lauren Stephens-Davidowitz, a staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, told the Eagle on Thursday.
“We have scores of young adults, eager to pursue a high school education at Rikers Island who are being denied that right,” Stephens-Davidowitz added.
The motion from the Legal Aid Society calls on a federal judge to reappoint an independent monitor in the case to take a full assessment of where high school education stands in the troubled jail complex run by the DOC, which already is under the watch of several other monitors in separate cases.
The firm, which brought the motion on behalf of 29 currently or formerly incarcerated New Yorkers who say they were denied access to education, called for the monitor to be appointed for two years.
Without the appointment of the monitor, Stephens-Davidowitz said it seems unlikely that young detainees will be given their court-mandated access to an education.
“Not only is it a legal failing, but it's a moral failing on the city's part,” she said.
Both the Department of Correction and the Department of Education directed the Eagle to the city’s Law Department when asked for comment on the filing.
A spokesperson for the Law Department said that the city was “reviewing the filing and will respond accordingly.”
‘Over here, there is no school’
The class action lawsuit that resulted in the allegedly violated court order was first brought in 1996. The class consisted of 16- to 21-year-olds detained in the city’s jails without a high school diploma – the class was narrowed in 2019 to 18- to 21-year-olds after the city stopped keeping 16- and 17-year-olds in DOC custody.
The case dragged on for two decades, but in 2016, a judge issued a court order that required DOC to offer 3 hours of educational services every school day to those who requested it and to offer the same schooling to those being held in restricted housing. It also required that DOC provide “access to educational services consistent with this order in a timely manner, including if necessary providing escorts for travel to and from his or her place of educational instruction.”
The order also said that detainees who were disabled or in need of special education should also have access to high school classes.
But in over 30 documented cases submitted by the Legal Aid Society alongside the motion this week, detainees and attorneys representing detainees say that essentially every aspect of the court order has consistently been violated.
Dewayne Wiggins, who was 19 years old during his incarceration on Rikers Island, said that during the year he was behind bars, he was only allowed to attend class for a two week period in which he was housed in the only unit officers told him high school programming was allowed.
Wiggins first arrived at Rikers in June 2022. While in intake, he said he filled out a school enrollment form and handed it over to an officer.
He was then taken to be housed in various units inside the Robert N. Davoren Complex, the facility where most young men are housed and where there is a specific program house where high school classes are held.
Wiggins, who was not being held in the program house, said he asked officers and captains to enroll him in school every time he was moved in the complex. But every time, he was told that school wasn’t offered in the housing unit he was in – a direct violation of the court order.
According to Wiggins, the teen was eventually taken to be housed in the program house, where he was allowed to attend school for all of two weeks, when he was again moved to a different housing area in RNDC.
In May 2023, Wiggins was placed in Enhanced Supervision Housing in the George R. Vierno Center. In his testimony, Wiggins said he “did not think people in ESH could attend school, but… told an officer that [he] wanted to enroll, just in case [he] was wrong.”
“The officer responded, ‘Over here, there is no school,’” Wiggins said.
Over a dozen current or former detainees said that they faced similar troubles attempting to get enrolled in school.
Avery Crawford, who was 20 at the time of his incarceration, said that despite numerous attempts to get taken to class, he was never enrolled in school throughout the entirety of his stay on Rikers.
At one point, Crawford claims he was told by an officer that he wouldn’t be allowed to enroll in school because the school was short staffed, an issue that plagued Rikers Island throughout the pandemic.
But Stephens-Davidowitz said that the time for “pandemic excuses is over.”
“There's no vestiges of the pandemic when it comes to school for kids outside [of Rikers],” she said.
Ultimately, Stephens-Davidowtiz said that by not providing high school classes to young detainees on Rikers, the city is missing an opportunity to make not only its jails but the city as a whole safer.
“There are people who are trying to have a structured, productive way to spend their time while they're in the chaotic mismanaged city jails and instead, they're being forced to sit idle,” the attorney said. “I think that just doesn't benefit anybody.”
“We also know from the data that pursuing and receiving a high school diploma or its equivalent while incarcerated really benefits somebody's life trajectory and reduces recidivism rates,” she added.
In his affidavit, Crawford said that his attempts to get enrolled in school were in pursuit of turning his life young around.
“I want to go to school because I want to get either my diploma or my GED so that I can get a good job when I get home and have a positive future,” Crawford said.
