Last Tuesday, the list of inmates who have lost their lives at the Rikers Island jail since Mayor Eric Adams and Department of Corrections Commissioner Louis Molina took control of the troublesome prison rose to 27 with the death of Donny Ubiera. So far in 2023 alone, 8 inmates have died in the prison complex, where the number of inmates has increased.
According to information from the NYPD, Ubiera had had several recent arrests, including last year in June, after allegedly stabbing two elderly people on the subway in Queens Plaza, one of them in the face and another in the neck, in two unprovoked attacks. Likewise, in previous years, he was arrested after allegedly hitting a man with a stick in a bakery, threatening an employee who tried to prevent him from robbing a store, and physically injuring four workers in December 2021.
The death of the 33-year-old man, who lived in Jackson Heights, Queens, before being sent to Rikers, once again unleashed voices of rejection by organizations that this week called for an emergency demonstration to demand that prison authorities provide basic protections for prisoners. internal, many with mental problems, and to the local president, the immediate closure of Rikers Island.
The protesters denounced that the Municipal Administration has failed in managing the prison, despite the voices of the Commissioner and the Mayor himself, who insist that under his mandate, Rikers is moving in the right direction and the crisis has been contained.
“Once again we are here showing our concern for the failed handling that the Rikers Department of Corrections has done (…) Donny was a human being from our community who died under barbaric conditions. We need change in a place where people don’t understand that 54% of detainees are people with mental health problems and 20% with serious conditions,” said chaplain Victoria Phillips, a member of the Prison Action Coalition, who demanded action. immediate action to release inmates and put them in other programs, stop sending people to jail that he called “a death camp,” and protect the human rights of those who arrive there.
The activist lashed out at the current Administration and said that they cannot continue to deny that they have failed in their task of remedying things in the prison, with a system that spends between $500,000 and $600,000 for each inmate kept behind bars at Rikers Island.
“Administrations get there and fail, both the current administration and the future administrations should really do their job, do things that are good for the communities and not just imprison people and put them in units that are inhumane and in which the guards do not They do not receive education nor are they held accountable for their actions,” commented the chaplain. “Spending almost $600,000 for each individual incarcerated doesn’t make sense. Those amounts are not used in housing, in vocational training. It is a blow to the face to see this when our communities do not have access to those resources, and clearly it is something that has to change now, because 8 lives have been lost in 2023 and 19 last year, and 16 the previous year and no one in positions of power has made changes.”
Ashley Santiago Conrad, from the Freedom Agenda organization, and who personally knew the inmate who lost his life last Tuesday, presumably from a methadone overdose, who would have been ignored by the guard while asking for help, according to complaints from other inmates.
“I grew up with Donny in Jackson Heights and East Elmhurt and he ended up being sent to this barbaric Rikers place, which is getting everyone, no matter what age or what neighborhood. He didn’t deserve to be there, this is all insane, as is my nephew who is at Rikers, who is a generation behind me, but who continues to live the same fate with a mayor who has increased incarceration rates. instead of reducing them,” said the community leader, who criticized the Municipal Administration for cutting funds to the communities and increasing the prison population.
“Incarcerations are now higher than 96, with a mayor cutting resources in communities making things more difficult, and in the midst of a 20% increase in mental conditions,” said the young woman. “Our communities deserve more than a jail. I don’t want more people to go through this same cycle over and over again. We need to change the cycle and close Rikers, although sadly, without resources, I think this will not be the last time we come together to talk about new deaths.
The Prison Action Coalition and the #HALTsolitary Campaign assured that prison deaths are the result of “political decisions and the current horrors of New York’s prisons are unscrupulous,” while also urging the Mayor, Governor Hochul , judges, district attorneys, the Board of Corrections, and state and local legislators to act now to advance a release plan.
Solomon Acevedo, spokesman for Justice and Security affairs for the Office of the Ombudsman, Jumaane Williams, joined the protest voices against the Adams Administration, and in addition to requesting a plan to remove more than 1,200 Rikers inmates, who They are mostly for crimes related to quality of life, he asked that the management of the prison be granted to a third party.
“It is painful to come back together to discuss yet another deadly situation and the horrifying reality that has become more widespread at Rikers. Things have not changed, they remain the same. The crime hot spots are the same and the incarcerated continue to be the same communities in a system that produces money that does not help individuals who continue to suffer,” said the spokesman for the Ombudsman, who insisted that they support the control of Rikers taken from the City and given to an independent administrator.
“The reality is that we have gone too far in corruption and toxicity at Rikers to a point where there is no going back. We need a new front to run things and promote real change efforts, like release; 400 inmates are young people between the ages of 18 and 19, who are at Rikers unnecessarily, need another type of intervention, 800 are over 50 years of age, and 400 are women without opportunities,” said Acevedo. “We have to support these individuals and support them to enter society and that is not happening at Rikers, because in reality Rikers is the last stop on the train and we have to interrupt that cycle.”
Following protesters’ complaints and denunciations, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Corrections said that 33-year-old Donny Ubiera, who had been in custody at Rikers since last March, was found unconscious in his cell at the George R. Friday at approximately 5:15 am on Tuesday, August 22, and then received “immediate medical attention but was pronounced dead at approximately 5:51 am.” The cause of death is unknown at this time.
“I think we’ve done a lot in the last 19 months to make a real, real difference in double-digit reductions in cuts, stabbings, and violence, in significant reductions in staff absenteeism, in significant improvements and improvement in the organizational health of our personnel who survived the trauma of this pandemic during the pandemic in ’20 and ’21,” said Commissioner Molina about the criticism of his management.