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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 9:22 pm
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Results for rikers island
7 results foundAuthor: New York City Board of Correction Title: Barriers to Recreation at Rikers Island's Central Punitive Segregation Unit Summary: When people confined in New York City's Rikers Island jail complex violate rules the Department of Correction (DOC) has the authority to remove them from the general inmate population and place them in punitive segregation. Often referred to as "the bing," punitive segregation functions as a jail within a jail, where prisoners are locked almost continuously in single-occupancy cells that are roughly 7 feet wide and 12 feet long. Several of the facilities on Rikers Island have punitive segregation units, and the largest is the Central Punitive Segregation Unit (CPSU) at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, which is reserved for male prisoners. On March 17 of this year, for example, 367 adults - 92.4% of all adult prisoners assigned to punitive segregation - were housed in the CPSU along with 22 adolescent prisoners, representing roughly a quarter (27.8%) of all teens in punitive segregation on that day. Because continuous solitary confinement is detrimental to a person's physical and mental health, the Minimum Standards promulgated by the New York City Board of Correction (BOC), reflecting both national and international standards for the treatment of prisoners, entitle inmates in punitive segregation to at least one hour of recreation every day. For individuals confined in the CPSU, the only form of recreation available is an hour alone in one of the Unit's 32 outdoor "cages." While the cages are empty of any equipment such as a basketball hoop and ball or pull-up bar that would facilitate exercise, this hour nevertheless represents a prisoner's only access to fresh air and direct sunlight and only opportunity for social contact with other prisoners in adjacent pens and staff present in the area. This brief interruption of life in solitary confinement is particularly important for a population with a high rate of mental illness and instability and, as a result, one that is difficult to supervise safely. According to snapshot data provided by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, more than half of prisoners in CPSU either came to Rikers Island with a diagnosed mental illness or received mental health services during their current period of incarceration. Details: New York: New York City Board of Correction, 2014. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 12, 2014 at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/boc/downloads/pdf/reports/CPSU_Rec_Report.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.nyc.gov/html/boc/downloads/pdf/reports/CPSU_Rec_Report.pdf Shelf Number: 132998 Keywords: Correctional ProgramsInmate DisciplineIsolationRikers IslandSolitary Confinement (New York City) |
Author: U.S. Department of Justice. United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Title: CRIPA Investigation of the New York City Department of Correction Jails on Rikers Island Summary: Attorney General Eric Holder and United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara announced today the completion of the Justice Department's multi-year civil investigation pursuant to the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act ("CRIPA") into the conditions of confinement of adolescent male inmates on Rikers Island. The investigation, which focused on use of force by staff, inmate-on-inmate violence, and use of punitive segregation during the period 2011-2013, concluded that there is a pattern and practice of conduct at Rikers Island that violates the rights of adolescents protected by the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The investigation found that adolescent inmates are not adequately protected from physical harm due to the rampant use of unnecessary and excessive force by New York City Department of Correction ("DOC") staff and violence inflicted by other inmates. In addition, the investigation found that DOC relies too heavily on punitive segregation as a disciplinary measure, placing adolescent inmates in what amounts to solitary confinement at an alarming rate and for excessive periods of time. Many of the adolescent inmates are particularly vulnerable because they suffer from mental illness. Details: New York: United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, 2014. 79p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 30, 2014 at: http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/August14/RikersReportPR/SDNY%20Rikers%20Report.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/August14/RikersReportPR/SDNY%20Rikers%20Report.pdf Shelf Number: 133871 Keywords: AdolescentsCorrectional AdministrationInmate ViolenceJail AdministrationJails (New York City)Prison ViolencePrisoner AbusePrisonersRikers IslandSegregation |
Author: New York City Department of Investigation Title: New York City Department of Investigation Report on the Recruiting and Hiring Process for New York City Correction Officers Summary: Department of Investigation (DOI) Commissioner Mark G. Peters today issued a comprehensive review of the Department of Correction's (DOC) hiring process for correction officers at Rikers Island, uncovering a deeply flawed system in which more than a third of officers were hired despite numerous corruption and safety hazards, including multiple prior arrests and convictions, prior associations with gang members, or relationships with inmates. Equally troubling, the Applicant Investigation Unit (AIU), responsible for screening potential recruits, relied on antiquated and haphazardly filed paper personnel documents and had little to no access to software necessary to perform basic background and credit checks. As a result, DOC has already replaced both its Director and Deputy Commissioner responsible for oversight of the AIU and responsible for the hiring of the applicants DOI reviewed, assigned additional staff to the screening process and committed to an aggressive set of reforms in this area. DOI Commissioner Mark G. Peters said, "DOI's latest investigation on Rikers Island exposes a shockingly inadequate screening system, which has led to the hiring of many officers that are underqualified and unfit for duty. Applicants with a history of violence or gang affiliations should not be patrolling our jails. Positions as law enforcement officers demand better. We are pleased DOC has listened to our recommendations and is taking the necessary steps, after a decade of neglect, to strengthen its recruitment to attract candidates with only the highest talent and character." DOC Commissioner Joseph Ponte said, "Improving staff recruitment, training and retention is a key part of my agenda of meaningful reform. My earliest actions as commissioner included providing new leadership for our staff recruiting and training operations. We have subsequently made significant changes to the Applicant Investigation Unit, including many based on recommendations from the DOI. Because at the end of the day, our performance is only as strong as the men and women who fill the posts that keep our facilities operating 24/7." This report is another piece of DOI's ongoing investigation into criminal activity and civil disorder at Rikers Island. As part of the probe, which began in early 2014, investigators spent over 200 hours interviewing staff, conducting site visits, and reviewing over 75,000 documents related to the hiring process. Details: New York: New York City Department of Investigation, 2015. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 30, 2015 at: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1502818/new-york-city-department-of-investigation-report.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1502818/new-york-city-department-of-investigation-report.pdf Shelf Number: 135830 Keywords: Correctional InstitutionsCorrections OfficersJailsPrisoner MaltreatmentRikers Island |
Author: Berkovitz, Melody Title: Rethinking Rikers: Moving from a Correctional to a Therapeutic Model for Youth Summary: "Children are not little adults . . . neurological research has made that clear." Consequently, a different system, or a different set of responses, is necessary to address the needs of young adults in the criminal justice system. Yet, New York City has lagged behind other jurisdictions, including New York State, in modernizing its treatment and punishment of youth offenders. Significantly, New York remains one of only two states in the country to treat 16 and 17-year olds as adults in its courts. More than 500 youth languish in New York City's Department of Correction facility on Rikers Island and over 75% of them are awaiting trial. Such a system of large-scale youth correctional facilities provides little benefit for long-term public safety. On the contrary, it wastes vast sums of taxpayer dollars, and more often than not, harms the well-being and dampens the future prospects of the youth behind bars. Each year, the United States invests 6 billion dollars to incarcerate youth, and within two to three years of their release, 70-80% of these youth are rearrested on a new offense. New York City spends $167,000 per year to hold a young person on Rikers Island. Instead of existing costly and ineffectual practices, policymakers should be working towards narrowing the pipeline of youth entering the criminal justice system. For those that do enter, New York City should adopt effective charging and bail policies, change case processing methods, and increase alternatives to incarceration and other services to improve outcomes for individuals. These practices would significantly reduce the number of youth in detention. Implementation of these necessary practices, however, is not within the control of the Board of Correction and is beyond the scope of this report. This report addresses effective practices for those youth who will be detained in secure facilities. Effective policy requires a fundamental shift to a therapeutic approach with practices that are specialized for and dedicated to youth rehabilitation. This begins with the pressing need to eliminate the use of solitary confinement. Solitary confinement for incarcerated youth across the United States has increasingly captured public attention. Although the definition varies, for purposes of this report, solitary confinement consists of extreme isolation for 22-24 hours a day with minimal human contact. The severe emotional, mental and physical harm caused by such practices is well documented. While isolation might be sparingly utilized for short periods of time in some circumstances, solitary confinement for lengthy periods is detrimental. Moreover, the practice itself has proven to be unnecessarily costly and a substantial contributor to increased recidivism rates. Some states have eliminated solitary confinement altogether. Others, including New York, continue to utilize solitary confinement for adults and children alike, irrespective of the burgeoning scientific data highlighting its harmful effects. Research in the past three decades demonstrates that heavy reliance on solitary confinement and more generally, on punitive-based models for incarceration of youth, is counterproductive. It does not work to reduce aggressive, violent, impulsive, or disobedient behaviors. In fact, solitary confinement increases these behaviors. Overall, the Rikers Island correctional model is damaging and in need of significant change. Solitary confinement is but the most extreme of the harmful practices. New York's current political climate provides an ideal opportunity to redesign the current youth detention system on Rikers Island. New York City should look to the flourishing success of models and practices in other jurisdictions and follow a fundamentally different approach to its treatment of youth in detention. We must embrace a shift from the traditional and oft-ineffective correctional facility model to the proven success of a residential treatment facility model. This report examines the emerging research and the characteristics and models adopted by other states that are effective in the treatment of youth. It makes recommendations to change existing practices for youth on Rikers Island. These include placement of youth into closely supervised small groups, access to group therapy and positive behavioral management, extensive staff training and reorientation of staff to a therapeutic approach, alternatives to discipline, procedural safeguards and methods to carefully assess and evaluate the programs. Details: New York: Yeshiva University, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, 2014. 70p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 22, 2015 at: https://cardozo.yu.edu/sites/default/files/YJCFeb2_1.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: https://cardozo.yu.edu/sites/default/files/YJCFeb2_1.pdf Shelf Number: 137050 Keywords: Juvenile CorrectionsJuvenile DetentionRikers IslandSolitary ConfinementYoung Adult OffendersYouth DetentionYouthful Offenders |
Author: Parsons, Jim Title: Impact Evaluation of the Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience (ABLE) Program Summary: In 2012, New York City launched the Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience (ABLE) program, a large-scale initiative serving 16- to 18-year-old youth held at the Rikers Island jail complex. The ABLE program provided Moral Reconation Therapy to young people with the aim of improving individual outcomes and reducing the number of youth who were rearrested and returned to the jail. Notably, the program was the first initiative in the U.S. to be funded using a social impact bond (SIB)—an innovative form of pay-for-success contracting that leverages private funding to finance public services. The investment bank, Goldman Sachs, provided initial funding for ABLE with the understanding that they would be reimbursed if the program reduced recidivism by at least 10 percent. The City of New York agreed to provide Goldman Sachs a return on their investment if the program reduced recidivism by 11 percent or more, based on savings associated with incarcerating fewer people at Rikers. The Vera Institute of Justice evaluated ABLE using a quasi-experimental design to assess whether the program led to reductions in recidivism for youth passing through the jail. The results of the evaluation determined whether the program met its contractual benchmarks. While the ABLE program reached the majority of 16- to -18-year-olds in the study cohort, it did not lead to reductions in recidivism and therefore did not meet the program's pre-defined threshold of success. Based on the findings of Vera's evaluation, the ABLE program was discontinued on August 31, 2015 Details: New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2016. 32p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 27, 2016 at: https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/rikers-adolescent-behavioral-learning-experience-evaluation/legacy_downloads/rikers-adolescent-behavioral-learning-experience-evaluation.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/rikers-adolescent-behavioral-learning-experience-evaluation/legacy_downloads/rikers-adolescent-behavioral-learning-experience-evaluation.pdf Shelf Number: 145010 Keywords: AdolescentsBehavioral ModificationCorrectional ProgramMoral Reconation TherapyRecidivismRikers Island |
Author: 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: New York (City). Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice Title: Smaller, Safer, Fairer: A Roadmap to Closing Rikers Island Summary: Our plan is to close Rikers Island and replace it with a smaller network of modern jails. Our goal is a jail system that is smaller, safer, and fairer - one consistent with the overall criminal justice system we are building in New York City, in which crime continues to fall, the jail population drops significantly, and all New Yorkers are treated with dignity. Our newer system of jails will be focused on helping those incarcerated find a better path in life and maintain access to community supports. And it will ensure that officers have safer places to work and more support. What follows is a credible path to that goal by continuing to reduce both crime and incarceration and by ensuring that the City's jails are humane productive places for those who work and are incarcerated there now. Specifically, this report includes 18 concrete strategies that will move the City toward a smaller jail population, safer facilities, and fairer culture inside jails. This plan will not be easy. Historically, community opposition, land use requirements, and the high cost of acquiring and developing new land have prevented the City from siting new jails or even expanding existing jails. And it will not be fast. We estimate it will take at least a decade. In order to achieve our goal, we must have a jail population that is small enough to be housed safely off-Island. On an average day in 2017, there were approximately 9,400 people incarcerated in city jails with space for just 2,300 of these people in existing facilities in the boroughs. To close Rikers and replace it with a new, smaller network of jails, we will have to continue to bring the jail population down while ensuring that we sustain the City's historically low crime rate - which is down 76% from 1990. Details: New York City: Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, 2019. 53p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 30, 2019 at: https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/reports/smaller-safer-fairer-copy/ Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: http://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Smaller-Safer-Fairer.pdf Shelf Number: 155246 Keywords: Incarceration Jail Jail Population New York City Rikers Island |