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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 1:29 am
Time: 1:29 am
Results for prison condition
2 results foundAuthor: Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform Title: A More Just New York City Summary: In her 2016 State of the City address, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito called for fundamental criminal justice reform. Titling her speech "More Justice," Mark-Viverito announced the creation of an independent commission to explore "how we can get the population of Rikers [Island] to be so small that the dream of shutting it down becomes a reality." The Speaker appointed former New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman to chair the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform. Under Judge Lippman's leadership, 27 commissioners were selected, including leaders in business, philanthropy, academia, law, and social services, as well as those with personal experience being held on Rikers Island. Several organizations from the non-profit and private sectors were engaged to provide research and strategic support, including the Center for Court Innovation, Latham & Watkins LLP, Vera Institute of Justice, CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance, Forest City Ratner Companies, Global Strategy Group, and HR&A Advisors. To ensure its independence, the Commission relied on philanthropic support, taking no money from government or political entities. For more than one year, the Commission has studied the City’s criminal justice system, and Rikers Island in particular. In addition to gathering formal testimony and interviewing a wide range of experts—city officials, corrections staff, formerly incarcerated New Yorkers and their families, prosecutors, defense attorneys, clergy, service providers, advocates, and others—the Commission undertook a far-reaching community engagement process, including meetings with the faith community, design workshops, public roundtables throughout the City, and a website to solicit public input. The Commission also performed in-depth data analysis and evaluated model programs and practices from across the country and around the world. Jail in New York City The presumption of innocence is one of the foundations of the American legal system. Yet on any given day, three-quarters of the roughly 9,700 people held in New York City’s jails are awaiting the outcome of their case, nearly all of them because they cannot afford bail. These individuals have been found guilty of no crime. Research shows that incarceration begets incarceration. Spending time behind bars also begets other problems, including eviction, unemployment, and family dysfunction. These burdens fall disproportionately on communities of color. On any given day, nine out of ten people being held behind bars in New York City are either Black (55 percent) or Latino (34 percent). The vast majority of those incarcerated in New York City, more than 7,500, are housed in nine jails located on Rikers Island (the rest are held in smaller facilities around the City). Many of these facilities are falling apart. And many lack the kinds of basic services, including air conditioning and space for social services, that are essential to a modern correctional system. This creates a toxic environment for everyone—both those being held and those doing the guarding. The Commission heard multiple reports of mistreatment on Rikers Island, ranging from small, daily humiliations to occasional acts of shocking brutality. Much of this testimony confirmed the stark conclusion of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan: there is a deep-seat- ed culture of violence on Rikers Island. Another problem is physical isolation. Rikers Island is located far from the City’s courthouses and neighborhoods. It is accessible only by a narrow bridge. The Department of Correction spends $31 million annually transporting defendants back and forth to courthouses and appointments off the Island. Visiting a loved one on Rikers can take an entire day, forcing people to miss work and make costly arrangements for child care. Rikers's inaccessibility also presents challenges for the men and women who work there. The Commission heard from corrections officers who slept in their cars between shifts rather than travel home to be with their families. Perhaps most importantly, Rikers's isolation encourages an "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" dynamic, to the detriment of all parties. Rikers Island essentially functions as an expensive penal colony. The Commission has estimated that the annual price of housing someone in a New York City jail is $247,000. The costs, both moral and financial, of this arrangement might be readily borne by New York City taxpayers if there were compelling evidence that it helped to keep the City safe. But no such evidence exists. For more than 20 years, New York City has successfully driven down both crime and incarceration, a trend which has continued under Mayor Bill de Blasio. The City has proven that more jail does not equal more public safety. Indeed, an emerging body of research suggests that jail can actually undermine public safety, encouraging criminal behavior and undermining the stability of families and communities. Details: New York: The Commission, 2017. 150p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 3, 2017 at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/577d72ee2e69cfa9dd2b7a5e/t/58e0d7c08419c29a7b1f2da8/1491130312339/Independent+Commission+Final+Report.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/577d72ee2e69cfa9dd2b7a5e/t/58e0d7c08419c29a7b1f2da8/1491130312339/Independent+Commission+Final+Report.pdf Shelf Number: 144694 Keywords: Criminal Justice ReformJailsPrison ConditionPrison ViolenceRikers Island |
Author: Roehm, Scott Title: Deprivation and Despair: The Crisis of Medical Care at Guantanamo Summary: From the inception more than 17 years ago of the Guantanamo Bay detention center located on the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, senior detention facility personnel have consistently lauded the quality of medical care provided to detainees there. For example, in 2005, Joint Task Force (JTF) Guantanamo's then-commander said the care was "as good as or better than anything we would offer our own soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines." In 2011, a Navy nurse and then deputy command surgeon for JTF Guantanamo made a similar claim: "The standard of care here is the best possible standard of care (the detainees) could get." In late 2017, Guantanamo's senior medical officer again echoed those sentiments: "Detainees receive timely, compassionate, quality healthcare...(which is)...comparable to that afforded our active duty service members on island." There have been many more such assertions in the intervening years and since. Following an in-depth review of publicly available information related to medical care at Guantanamo - both past and present - as well as consultations with independent civilian medical experts and detainees' lawyers, the Center for Victims of Torture and Physicians for Human Rights have determined that none of those assertions is accurate. To the contrary, notwithstanding Guantanamo's general inaccessibility to independent civilian medical professionals, over the years a handful of them have managed to access detainees, review medical records, and interface with Guantanamo's medical care system to a degree sufficient to document a host of systemic and longstanding deficiencies in care. These include: - Medical needs are subordinated to security functions. For example, prosecutors in a military commission case told the judge explicitly that the commander of Guantanamo's detention operations is free to disregard recommendations of Guantanamo's senior medical officer. - Detainees' medical records are devoid of physical and psychological trauma histories. This is largely a function of medical professionals' inability or unwillingness to ask detainees about torture or other traumatic experiences during their time in the CIA's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, or otherwise with respect to interrogations by U.S. forces - which has led to misdiagnoses and improper treatment. -In large part due to a history of medical complicity in torture, many detainees distrust military medical professionals which has led repeatedly to detainees reasonably refusing care that they need. Guantanamo officials withhold from detainees their own medical records, including through improper classification. -Both expertise and equipment are increasingly insufficient to address detainees' health needs. For example, a military cardiologist concluded that an obese detainee required testing for coronary artery disease, but that Guantanamo did not have the "means to test" him, and so the testing was not performed. With regard to mental health, effective torture rehabilitation services are not, and cannot be made, available at Guantanamo. - Detainees have been subjected to neglect. One detainee urgently required surgery for a condition he disclosed to Guantanamo medical personnel in 2007 - and they diagnosed independently in 2010 - but he did not receive surgery until 2018 and appears permanently damaged as a result. - Military medical professionals rotate rapidly in and out of Guantanamo, which has caused discontinuity of care. For example, one detainee recently had three primary care physicians in the course of three months. - Detainees' access to medical care and, in some cases, their exposure to medical harm, turn substantially on their involvement in litigation. For example, it appears extremely difficult, if not impossible, for detainees who are not in active litigation to access independent civilian medical professionals, and for those who are to address a medical need that is not related to the litigation. For detainees charged before the military commissions, prosecution interests have superseded medical interests, as with a detainee who was forced to attend court proceedings on a gurney writhing in pain while recovering from surgery. These deficiencies are exacerbated by - and in some cases a direct result of - the damage that the men have endured, and continue to endure, from torture and prolonged indefinite detention. It is long past time that the medical care deficiencies this report describes were acknowledged and addressed. Systemic change is necessary; these are not problems that well- intentioned military medical professionals - of which no doubt there are many, working now in an untenable environment - can resolve absent structural, operational, and cultural reform. Nor, in many respects, are they problems that can be fully resolved as long as the detention facility remains open. Guantanamo should be closed. Unless and until that happens, the Center for Victims of Torture and Physicians for Human Rights call upon Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Judiciary to adopt a series of recommendations aimed at meaningfully improving the status quo. These include, but are not limited to: lifting the legal ban on transferring detainees to the United States and mandating such transfers when detainees present with medical conditions that cannot be adequately evaluated and treated at Guantanamo; ensuring detainees have timely access to all of their medical records upon request while otherwise maintaining confidentiality of those records (especially with regard to access by prosecutors); and allowing meaningful and regular access to Guantanamo by civilian medical experts, including permitting such experts to evaluate detainees in an appropriate setting. If the United States declines to take the steps this report recommends, complex medical conditions that cannot be managed at Guantanamo should be expected to accelerate in frequency and escalate in severity. Details: New York: Physicians for Human Rights and The Center for Victims of Torture, 2019. 58p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 19, 2019 at: https://phr.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PHR_CVT-Guantanamo-medical-crisis-report-June-2019-1.pdf Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: https://phr.org/our-work/resources/deprivation-and-despair/ Shelf Number: 156815 Keywords: DetaineeDetentionGuantanamoHuman Rights AbusesMedical CarePrison ConditionPrisonersTorture |