A special hearing of the New York City Council put on the table this Tuesday other “letters” about the “hellish” conditions of the Rikers Island prison, the largest in New York: Since 1999, there have never been so many failures to transport the defendants to the different hearings with the judges.
The new accusing fingers against the management of the prison system in the Big Apple point strongly, when in the budget for the next fiscal year 2024, it is managed to reduce prison funds. Furthermore, when a month of May ends with a sequence of “serious incidents” involving the integrity of the prisoners.
According to the testimonies of public defenders, lawyers and those affected, the delays and failures in prison transport are causing terrible calamities, since innocent people spend weeks or months waiting for a new appointment in the different criminal courts, after not having been brought on time to their preliminary hearings or trials.
“This is unacceptable. There are many human rights violations that we can describe. To everything, we must add that the court processes are absolutely collapsed, just like the prisons. And this exacerbates the mental health conditions of many inmates,” activist Darren Mack of the organization Freedom Agenda said in the municipal chamber.
A recent Mayor’s Management Report, ratified by some activists, but at the same time considered “unrealistic” by others, shows that only 72.2% of those arrested between September and December of last year were brought to court on time.
The percentage of detainees brought to court in a timely manner averaged 95% between 1999 and 2012.
Around this trend attributed to personnel failures, problems with official transport units and deficiencies in coordinating transfers, defenders also denounce that problems with medical care for the mentally ill and feeding the population in custody have worsened. .
Do they refuse to attend?
It is also denounced as a persistent failure that those accused by “error” are taken to courts other than those scheduled, causing systematic delays in the process.
Other reasons that cause these delays or absences is that when there are violent incidents inside the prisons, they must be temporarily closed. And these facts completely “block” the possibility that inmates who are waiting for a hearing take the transport units.
In summary, leaders of organizations such as the Manhattan Office of Defender Services (NYCDS) conclude that “the DOC’s persistent failure to bring our incarcerated clients to court routinely delays their release from jail, stalls the progress of cases and violates their constitutional rights.”
On the other hand, one of the arguments of the penitentiary officials of the growing trend of missing appointments with the judges is that inmates frequently refuse to attend, despite the fact that they have transportation and logistics from the DOC. They generally adduce nervous breakdowns, health problems, lack of lawyers or other reasons that prevent them from “seeing the face” of the judge.
A survey carried out by NYCDS indicated that 58% of criminal lawyers say that at least once in the last two months, their clients strongly denied that they had opposed being mobilized in court.
Council rules more transparency
Faced with the great challenge of minimizing the number of inmates who do not attend their court appearances punctually, the Criminal Justice Committee of the Municipal Council put the accelerator this week, to advance a bill that requires the Department of Correction (DOC) records audios and videos of all interactions in which a person in custody allegedly refuses to attend a court appearance.
The rule would require the City to upload all of these videos to a database.
The legislative proposal also requires the Commissioner to designate a liaison for judicial processes that guarantees that defense lawyers can access the videos of “alleged refusal”, establish a system to resolve complaints related to the administration of justice.
Finally, the bill includes monthly reporting requirements on how the City’s prison system coordinates with the court system for attendance at arraignments.
“This hearing, accompanied by so many heartbreaking testimonies, helps us improve a law that ultimately seeks more transparency, more controls, and evidence of how the City manages the prison system,” explained Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, who leads the Justice committee. Criminal.
Languishing on Rikers Island
For example, Joshua White, an attorney for the NYCDS reminded chamber members that one of his clients was not brought to court for four hearings to have his bail reduced or taken away. Therefore he had to “languish” for months on Rikers Island.
On each of those occasions, White received no explanation for the non-mobilization to court. While the judge refused to reconsider the bond, without the presence of his client.
When the man finally had his hearing, the bond was withdrawn and he was released.
Delayed cases inevitably lead to an increase in the detainee population. Thus, the logic of advocates is that this will complicate the planned closure of Rikers Island by 2027.
The current plan is to close the Queens prison complex and replace it with four facilities in other parts of the city. But for this, the detained population must be 3,000. Right now, it is close to 6,000 and with the technical adjustments of the bail law reform, everything projects that this number will continue to grow.
The City: “We are better”
In a message released to local media, DOC Commissioner Louis Molina stated that security, staff absenteeism and transportation of detainees to court have improved since he was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in January 2022.
“We have rescued prisons from collapse,” the official said.
For his part, in a statement shared by the digital media Gothamist, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, Lucian Chalfan, said that they are in constant communication with the DOC to improve the processing of prisoners on time.
“We work diligently to improve the percentage of detainees who arrive on time for their appearances. It remains a work in progress,” she assured.
May was violent
In a “special report” presented by federal monitor Steve J. Martin, he outlined five incidents in the city’s jails, just this month of May, that may be representative of a “broader trend” pointing to jail officials in Failing to Provide Emergency Medical Care:
- On May 11, a detainee ran out of an elevator without authorization, corrections officers knocked him down, handcuffed him and tied his legs. While he was being held, the prisoner apparently could not bear his own weight and fell to the ground, repeatedly hitting his head. He has now had three surgeries and is paralyzed from the neck down.
- On May 14, an inmate, Rubu Zhao, 52, who was on trial for murder, committed suicide after jumping from the floor of a Rikers Island unit. He had been in DOC custody since December 14.
- On May 17, after a man was assaulted by several other detainees, he was allegedly left naked and alone for at least three hours. When the detainee was finally hospitalized, he was seriously injured with multiple rib injuries.
- On May 20, shortly after arriving on Rikers Island, an elderly man in his late 80s with “possible cognitive impairment, health issues, and limited English proficiency” was handcuffed and left alone in a hallway for at least four hours.
- A 30-year-old inmate was placed on life support and determined unlikely to survive after suffering what DOC described as a heart attack. According to the report, the monitor could not confirm that these claims are true.