‘Always terrified’: Detainees on Rikers share their story

Detainees on Rikers Island say conditions have deteriorated and that they are constantly worried about their health and safety.  AP file photo by Bebeto Matthews

By Rachel Vick and Jacob Kaye

In June, Angel Pagan mailed his wife a handwritten petition detailing the deteriorating health and safety conditions on Rikers Island.

It was signed by 22 of the men incarcerated alongside him at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center over the summer.

Teresa Mojica received the petition at the end of August and was left reeling, despite already having some knowledge about the deteriorating conditions inside the jail.

“I started reading and I was in shock,” she said. “It's very discouraging because I don’t know if I'm going to get a call that something bad happened to him.”

The petition outlines filth-ridden intake cells with overflowing sewage near where the incarcerated people slept, and a total lack COVID-19 safety precautions. The conditions reflect those recently seen and denounced by lawmakers.

At the time of the letter, the signatories say they had been without recreation time for three weeks. The halls were dotted with trash and the bugs that came with it.

“Despite numerous calls to 311 and complaints to staff, our minimum hygiene standards have not been met,” they wrote. “Inmates needing health services are not being called or delayed for days and even weeks, causing inmates to lash out and react in anger fearing the typical outcome of no existence.”

They described the conditions as “inhumane,” with each worsening conditioning piling onto the next.

The two page petition details the conditions the men experienced during and after intake.

Pagan’s year-long sentence for a nonviolent crime is up in April, but he had no interest in waiting that long in silence.

Mojica helped Pagan — who she said just hopes someone will make the changes — send the letter and notarized paperwork detailing the conditions to the comptroller.

The violence, which they say is exasperated when officers leave “their posts unattended for hours,” described in the petition is mirrored in the experience of other incarcerated individuals who spoke with the Eagle.

One man, who requested his name be withheld because of fear of reprisal, has been held in the jail facility for five years as he awaits trial after being charged in a double murder he says he did not committ.

“The whole system is archaic and is becoming more barbaric,” he said.

The detainee said that while he’s seen an increase in violence, he is almost more concerned about the unsanitary conditions of the jail.

With officers missing work in record numbers, the detainee said his fellow incarcerated individuals lack laundry services, PPE and personal grooming and hygiene products. In the past year, he said it’s been almost impossible to get a haircut.

“It wears and tears you, it's made to break your spirit completely,” the detainee said. “This is the mental state of most inmates, it's just gone. It’s just like being kidnapped, you just start believing that this is the way things should be. That's that's all you know –you literally forget what humanity is, and you fall to the conditions of the present and what that results in is that you're always hostile, you're always defensive, you're always terrified.”

In the past month, both the state and local government have taken steps to decrease the inmate population, speed up hearings and increase the number of court officers in an attempt to better the conditions on Rikers.

The federal monitor appointed to oversee the jail recently told a federal judge that the steps weren’t enough and on Wednesday, a judge agreed. The city was ordered to implement the monitor’s several recommendations to reduce the instances of violence and self-harm among detainees and to bring corrections officers back to work.

On Friday, the Assembly is holding a public hearing on conditions in the Rikers facilities.

Pagan has taken note of some of the actions taken by elected officials and told his wife that the release and move of nearly 200 people through the Less is More signage last month has alleviated some, but not all, of the pressure on the inside.

Mojica called the government’s recent actions “a temporary bandage.”

The emergency alarm was sounding off in the background of several of Mojica’s most recent phone calls; Pagan told her they go off almost every day. Knowing the conditions from his first hand accounts, Mojica doesn’t plan on bringing the couple’s two young daughters to visit anytime soon.

“Something needs to be done,” she said.

A DOC spokesperson told the Eagle that the agency continues work to improve conditions for detainees through the Emergency Rikers Relief Plan.

“Our staffing crisis has led to interruptions of vital services, but we are working to create a productive, resourceful and safe environment at Rikers Island,” they said. “Changes will not happen overnight, but we are committed to improving conditions to ensure the wellbeing of our personnel and individuals in our care.”