Hochul Orders Release of 191 Detainees as Rikers Crisis Deepens
The New York governor signed a bill on Friday that authorized the release of the detainees, but the population of the city’s notorious jail will remain far higher than it was last spring.
Sept. 17, 2021
By Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Chelsia Rose Marcius
Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday ordered the release of nearly 200 detainees from New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex, underscoring the growing alarm about violence and
unbridled disorder at the notorious facility.
Ms. Hochul’s move came amid increasing calls for federal or state intervention at the city-run jail, which officials and detainees say has plunged into chaos — Ms. Hochul described it as a “pressure cooker” — and is rife with health and safety risks for inmates and employees alike. Ten detainees have died there since December, including several from suicide.
But the plan will not significantly reduce overcrowding, and it may do little to address two continuing crises at Rikers, one rooted in an acute staff shortage at the complex, the other in an increase in coronavirus cases there in recent weeks.
In addition to the release of the 191 detainees she announced Friday, Ms. Hochul also said she would transfer 200 others to state prisons in the coming days. Even with those moves, Rikers will be far more crowded than it was in spring 2020, when a wave of releases during the pandemic lowered the population below 4,000. On Friday, more than 6,000 people, the vast majority of them awaiting trial, were being held there.
The release of the detainees was based on a new law that Ms. Hochul signed on Friday that seeks to reduce jail populations by ending the practice of incarcerating people who commit certain technical parole violations.
But the law does not tackle what a court-appointed federal monitor has described as the widespread absenteeism among correction officers that has contributed to a deterioration of security and health conditions at the complex. With hundreds or thousands of guards not showing up to work daily, officials and detainees alike say that basic jail functions have ground to a halt: Gangs patrol hallways, detainees are held in showers repurposed as stalls and some incarcerated people are going without water, food or medical care for days.
On Friday, some local officials suggested that the federal authorities might seek to wrest control of the crisis from the city. Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, urged the monitor to ask a federal judge to order authorities to increase staffing levels. The monitor was appointed in 2015 under
a settlement between the city and the Justice Department that was meant to resolve a class-action civil rights lawsuit that detailed abuses at Rikers.
“About a month ago, the federal monitor overseeing Rikers stated that for the time being the situation was best dealt with by the City and the Department of Correction,” a spokesman for Mr. Gonzalez said on Friday. “That time is now over, and an immediate action plan to increase staffing and safety is required.”
At a meeting on Friday with the leaders of the unions that represent Rikers officers, Vincent Schiraldi, the correction commissioner, mentioned several ideas that he said were being considered to address the crisis, according to Joseph Russo, the president of the union that represents assistant deputy wardens and deputy wardens.
Those ideas include transferring officers in from state juvenile facilities and hiring private security guards to handle some duties at the complex. A Correction Department spokesman confirmed that bringing in private firms had been discussed but that the jobs in question would not involve interacting with people in custody.
Mr. Russo said that the unions would fiercely resist any plan to privatize jobs held by uniformed correction employees.
“We are circling our wagons and discussing what we can do to stop it,” he said.
Benny Boscio, the president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said in a statement on Friday that the jobs being discussed did require significant contact with incarcerated people and that any move to privatize them would be illegal.
He said that Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has come under harsh criticism for his response to the problems at the complex was trying “to cover up years of intentional neglect, failing to hire any C.O.s and leaving Rikers to rot until it closes.”
Ms. Boscio added: “Now he’s willing to break the law to help his own reputation before a run for governor.”
The
mounting disorder at the jail comes as the city confronts a rise in violent crime, which some law-enforcement officials cited as a contributing factor to the overcrowding at Rikers.
Last fall, there were around 700 defendants from the Bronx being held at the complex; this month, there were 1,100, an increase that Darcel D. Clark, the Bronx district attorney, attributed to a “surge in violence.” She noted that most of those defendants had been charged with violent crimes, including murder, domestic violence, shootings and rape.
As the violence at Rikers has worsened, finger-pointing has ensued: The correction officers’ union has blamed mismanagement, staffing shortfalls and unsafe conditions for thousands of worker absences. Prosecutors have blamed delays in court for a backlog of detained defendants. Judges have faulted the Correction Department for defendants missing court appointments.
And Mr. de Blasio, who has championed a plan to eventually close the troubled facility, has come under withering criticism both for his handling of the crisis and his failure to visit the jail complex in recent years. The closing plan,
approved two years ago by the City Council, has stalled amid
objections to creating four new jails around the city to replace Rikers.
This week, after a series of violent episodes and reports of chaotic conditions at Rikers,
Mr. de Blasio announced an emergency plan that would allow the Correction Department to suspend without pay workers who were found to be absent without permission. From July 2020 to June of this year, the average number of guards who called in sick each month had more than doubled, while the number of those who were absent without official approval had risen 300 percent.
Tina Luongo, attorney-in-charge of the Criminal Defense Practice at The Legal Aid Society, said that Ms. Hochul’s willingness to sign the law, known as the Less is More Act, was a strong first step toward decreasing the population at Rikers.
But Mx. Luongo also said Mr. de Blasio had not done nearly enough to sharply lower the number of detainees at the complex, and urged him to put those serving sentences for low-level crimes on supervised release rather than transferring them to state prison.
“Less is More is hugely important, and this is the level of crisis intervention you want to see from leadership,” Mx. Luongo said.
“I don’t see that level of crisis intervention leadership from the mayor. There are still things that must be done,” they added. “He has the opportunity to do it right now.”
On Friday, Mr. de Blasio said the city had committed to releasing the 191 detainees as soon as possible. In some cases, he said, it might take several days to free those who had to appear in court before they could be released.
He also said the best way to reduce the jail population was to fully restart the court system.
“I’ve been appealing to the state to restart the whole criminal justice system, the court system fully,” he said.
But Ms. Clark, the Bronx District Attorney, said the staffing crisis had also exacerbated the backlog of court cases. Without an adequate number of guards, she said, defendants who are being held in the jails are not arriving to court on time, or at all.
“Now, because of the staffing issue, we have inmates indicted for violence while in jail who are not being produced for arraignment in a timely manner,” Ms. Clark said.
While officials seek to tamp down the chaos at the jail, virus rates among detainees appear to be climbing. Correctional health officials first reported an uptick in the prevalence of the virus in mid-August, followed by a spike in cases later in the month. After active cases and rates in the jail dropped to near zero in June and July, the seven-day average positive test rate among detainees — 4.36 percent this week — is now higher than the city’s overall 3.92 rate.
Only 36 percent of detainees and 37 percent of the Correction Department’s staff are fully vaccinated, according to city data.
“The current conditions are resulting in a rapid increase in Covid-19 infection rate in the jails. Previously effective control mechanisms such as isolation and quarantine will not be possible because of the department’s dysfunction and overcrowding,” Dr. Robert Cohen, a member of the Board of Correction, an independent body that monitors the jail system, said at a City Council hearing this week.
On Friday, Dr. Cohen praised Ms. Hochul’s signing of the bill, but he said more needed to be done to further reduce the jail population.
“Decarceration is the critical response to this emergency because until the officers come back it will allow the smaller staff to potentially function more safely for everybody,” he said.
The city should also move quickly to close Rikers, said the state’s former chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, who led the study to shutter the troubled jail.
“There’s nothing that is enough until you close that horrible place,” Judge Lippman said in an interview. “We cant keep kicking this down the road. There’s got to be an urgency. Less is More is helpful, but this is getting into a crisis mode. There’s no easy answer.”
Most of the 191 people set to be released on Friday were being held for violating parole, and Ms. Hochul said the new law’s focus on ending reimprisonment tor technical violations was a crucial step toward ending one of the largest causes of mass incarceration in New York.
“Parole in this state often becomes a ticket back into jail because of technical violations,” she said. “Someone was caught with a drink or using a substance or missing an appointment.”
In its report last month, the federal monitor said the staff shortages had compounded a breakdown in basic security protocols, which had led to a rash of violence across the jail.
“This state of seriously compromised safety has spiraled to a point at which, on a daily basis, there is a manifest risk of serious harm to both detainees and staff,” the monitor, Steve Martin, wrote. “Turmoil is the inevitable outcome of such a volatile state of affairs.”