Rikers monitor questions DOC’s competence
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The Rikers Island federal monitoring team questioned the competence of DOC leadership in its most recent report filed in federal court. Chief of Department Kenneth Stukes and DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi pictured above. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
The federal monitor appointed to oversee Rikers Island issued an update on the jail in crisis Thursday and suggested that Department of Correction leadership may not be up to the task of getting things in order.
Steve J. Martin, the federal monitor tasked with overseeing Rikers Island, issued a letter updating U.S District Court, Southern District of New York Chief Judge Laura T. Swain on the city’s progress in getting Rikers Island under control. The letter follows a court order issued by Swain last month that required the city to enact the monitor’s recommendations.
In previous letters and reports, the monitor has described an unsafe jail facility with unusually high levels of use of force incidents, lacking safety precautions and a general state of chaos and ineptitude.
“The Monitoring Team remains concerned about whether Department leadership possess the level of competency to safely manage the jails,” Martin wrote in the Oct. 14 letter. “While the Department [of Correction] has taken a few positive actions related to the Monitoring Team’s concerns in the past two weeks, given the depth and dimension of the problems, these actions
have not materially abated the high risk of harm prevalent in the daily operations of the New
York DOC to both incarcerated persons and staff.”
Amid the pandemic, a recent increase in the incarcerated population and an historic staff shortage, in-custody deaths on Rikers have reached a five year high. A dozen people have died in DOC’s custody this year. Three of those deaths happened in September.
Last year, 11 people died in custody. In 2019, three detainees died on Rikers Island.
In-custody deaths were not the only troubling metric noted by the monitor in the letter.
Also on the rise are the number of use of force incidents by correctional officers. In 2021, there have been over 720 use of force incidents, a number that is “extremely high,” according to the monitor.
In September, 183 of those incidents happened in intake areas, where incarcerated people have been held for days and weeks in some incidents.
The number of stabbing incidents has also risen, particularly in October. Through the first dozen days of the month, there were nearly just as many stabbings. The month prior, there were 51 stabbing or slashing incidents, the monitor reported.
However, the monitoring team does give DOC and Mayor Bill de Blasio some credit for implementing some of the changes recommended in previous reports.
DOC recently developed an interim security plan, as ordered by Swain last month.
The plan includes initiatives to fix unsecured doors and to address officers’ abandonment of posts. DOC has also reinstated officer roll call, to better stay on the same page, and it’s expected to soon reinstate incarcerated council meetings, to keep individuals in custody more in the loop, as well, the monitor wrote.
The agency has also implemented a plan to communicate to staff their obligations under the jail’s Suicide Prevention and Intervention Policy, something that was lacking this year. Five of the 12 deaths this year have been by suicide.
The amount of time an incarcerated person spends in intake has also seen a great reduction. From Sept. 24 to Oct. 8, around 450 people were processed into DOC custody, according to the monitor. On average, those in custody were processed in 13 and a half hours.
There were some recommended changes that have yet to be implemented.
Last month, the monitor suggested that the DOC should seek leadership from outside the agency’s ranks. The city told the monitor that city law prevents it from hiring outside help.
“Accordingly, the city’s leadership at the highest levels has engaged the governor’s office to request an emergency order to suspend the relevant state law provision and administrative code provision to allow DOC to hire uniform leadership from outside the agency,” Martin said. “The Monitoring Team applauds the City’s efforts to seek this assistance.”
A DOC spokesperson said that the agency has “previously echoed many of the same concerns of the Monitoring Team.”
“However, in this report, the Monitoring Team did make note of our work and progress related to requirements from the new Court Order that are designed to address these major concerns,” the spokesperson said.
Martin’s letter came a day after the city and state agreed to send over 230 women and trans people off of Rikers Island and to correctional facilities upstate.
Public defense organizations and criminal justice reform advocates decried the decision made by Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Bill de Blasio, alleging it would remove incarcerated people away from their networks and loved ones in the city.
The monitor refrained from giving his opinion on the move, instead saying his team would monitor the transfers and share an update in its next letter.
