“If the Rikers Island jail complex had one inmate it still would be chaos.” “How about running a jail like it’s supposed to be run: humanly, efficiently, safely and securely,” Chalfen said. Lucian Chalfen, the spokesperson for the Office of Court Administration, told the Eagle that it’s OCA’s belief that the population of Rikers is not to blame for the conditions, but rather how it’s run. It's about the entire criminal justice system, and it should not be happening.” We need your help to get the court system to actually be functioning at every level. “While the rest of government opened up, the court system has not and is not doing what we all want to see, which are actually moving cases through,” Fuleihan said. Nearly 90 percent of all people incarcerated in Rikers are on pre-trial detention. “It's beginning to work over the past two weeks, we've reduced our jail population.”Īs they have done several times in the past month, Schiraldi and New York City First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan, called on the courts to schedule and process cases faster in an effort to lower the number of people on Rikers. “We need to reduce the number of people in our custody,” he said. Since the order, around 160 have been released, according to the commissioner. Last month, the Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Less Is More Act and ordered the release of around 200 people being held on technical parole violations. Currently there are a little more than 5,540 people incarcerated on the island, down from 6,000 at the beginning of September. We're going to score runs by hitting a lot of singles.”Īt the top of the DOC’s list is the effort to lower the jail’s population. “We're engaged in what I consider a balanced and multifaceted approach to tackling these problems, because that's what it's going to take to get the job done,” Schiraldi said. The DOC has offered incentives to officers to show up to work, made a commitment to ending triple shifts and has sped up the intake process. They described staffing shortages, dilapidated infrastructure and a culture of violence.Īnd while they agreed on the issues facing incarcerated people and the correctional officers charged with giving them care, they vastly differed on the root causes of the issues and the solutions to cure them.ĭOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi, who was one of the first to testify Friday, laid out the ways in which the city has taken action in recent weeks to address the crisis that has been exacerbated during his first four months in office.
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Those who testified – particularly those from the Department of Correction, the mayor’s office and the Correctional Officers’ Benevolent Association – described a series of compounding issues which have led to the current conditions in the jail set to close before the end of the decade. “Our incarcerated population is experiencing a health emergency.” “The infrastructure of these facilities is severely degraded,” he said. Weprin, who visited the jail in August, called the conditions “horrendous.” “We need answers as to why these deaths have occurred.” “We are responsible for the safety and health of these individuals, yet, since the first of this year, at least 12 people have died in Department of Correction custody,” Weprin said at the start of the hearing. The Department of Correction, the corrections officers’ union and scores of activists and families who have been impacted by the deteriorating conditions in the jail that has led to a dozen deaths in the past nine months, gave testimony to members of the committee, which is chaired by Queens Assemblymember David Weprin. The State Assembly’s Committee on Corrections held an all-day hearing on the crisis on Rikers Island Friday.
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