City violates detainees’ right to counsel, attys claim

Michael Klinger, a jail services attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services, testifies at Tuesday’s Board of Correction hearing. Klinger claimed that the Department of Correction often violates the rights of detainees to meet with their attorneys. Screenshot via BOC

By Jacob Kaye

Public defense attorneys alleged on Tuesday that the Department of Correction consistently violates the rights of detainees by making it difficult for them to meet with their lawyers while being held on Rikers Island.

A group of public defense organizations, led by New York County Defender Services and Brooklyn Defender Services, told the DOC’s watchdog, the Board of Correction, that attorneys regularly jump through hoops to meet with their clients being held in the city’s notoriously dangerous jail complex.

Lawyers speaking at the Tuesday BOC meeting claimed that attorneys frequently wait hours to meet with their clients, often without explanation from the DOC. The lawyers also claimed that the DOC records confidential phone calls between attorneys and their clients before turning them over directly to local district attorneys.

There’s also general mismanagement within the agency that often interferes with attorney-client meetings, Christopher Boyle, the director of data research and policy at New York County Defender Services, and Michael Klinger, an attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services, said on Tuesday. Changes to visiting procedures often go uncommunicated and sometimes appear to be ad hoc, they said.

After one of his meetings with a client on Rikers, Boyle said that he was left to wander around a jail facility completely on his own for some time before being spotted by an officer. The incident came shortly after the DOC had opened up a new housing facility before setting up a procedure of attorney visits in the new space, he said.

The claims, some of which are currently making their way through the courts, struck a chord with several members of the BOC, who lambasted the city agency for allegedly failing to address the attorneys’ complaints.

“I think it's very, very clear that these are violations of the right to counsel and attorney client privilege,” said Barry Cozier, a former appellate division judge who serves on the BOC. “The privacy and confidentiality issues have to be addressed.”

The DOC largely denied the claims but declined to address each one that was made in the hour-long presentation.

“We have acknowledged that there is some work that needs to be done, and we are doing it,” said Fritz Grage, a senior deputy commissioner at the DOC, before disputing some of the public defenders’ complaints.

Attorneys say there are about half dozen systemic issues that make meeting with their clients on Rikers Island difficult.

There is often a lack of communication and coordination between jail facilities when an attorney is on their way, according to the public defenders. Attorneys also often have to wait anywhere from one to two hours to meet with their clients and are rarely told the reason behind the delay.

By the time they finally are face-to-face with their client, the attorneys said they are forced into meeting rooms or booths in poor conditions. Some are completely dark, others have broken chairs. One room was so hot that a legal team had to end a meeting with a client early to get some fresh air, according Boyle. Some booths have plexiglass so thick that people on either side can't hear each other, and others lack enough plexiglass, making it difficult to have confidential conversations because others outside of the room can hear them.

The attorneys said one of the biggest problems facing attorneys on Rikers Island is an enhanced supervised housing area for detainees accused of committing a violence while incarcerated. Attorneys visiting their clients in the unit get put in locked, windowless rooms and are sometimes left alone for a significant amount of time.

According to Boyle, a pregnant public defender was held in a locked room for hours while waiting to meet with her client. Another was held for 40 minutes before the DOC attempted to put an incarcerated person inside the room with them.

“This continues to be a very dangerous situation,” Boyle said on Tuesday.

In April 2024, New York County Defender Services sued the DOC over conditions at the unit and in February 2025, a judge said the agency had to grant legal visitors the same rights they grant to those at other jail facilities.

The DOC appealed the decision in May.

Tuesday’s BOC meeting was the first the oversight board held since July. In the time that the board has met, five people in DOC custody died.

A dozen people have died in DOC custody or shortly after being released from it this year, the highest death toll in a single year since 2022, when 19 people died.