Charizma Jones’s family expected her to return home from Rikers Island by the holiday season, says their lawyer MK Kaishian. Instead, a Board of Correction (BOC) report released on Dec. 30 expanded on how the 23-year-old was denied medical care before her July 14, 2024 death as previously reported by the Amsterdam News.
“Nothing in this report came as a surprise,” said Kaishian over the phone. “It did solidify the specific discrete instances where she was denied care where…medical staff were prevented from entering the cell where she was being held. There’s a couple of more incidents that were identified in this report than weren’t in the records originally available to us. So while the fact of the denial of care is not new, a couple additional incidents were included in the report that we did not previously have knowledge of.”
Jones fell ill last spring, developing conditions like a skin rash, a swollen throat and high fever. Yet on May 5, correctional staff blocked health care workers from accessing her cell five times for treatment as previously reported. A day later, she was moved from jail to an outside hospital. She would be moved between medical facilities for tests and treatment until her passing roughly two months later.
Official cause of death remains pending from the Office of the Medical Examiner but preliminary records pointed to “multi-organ failure.”
“The health and safety of every person in our care is always our foremost concern,” said a DOC spokesperson in an email response. “This specific incident remains under investigation and we will refrain from commenting on these reports until the investigations are closed.”
Fellow detainees housed with Jones attempted to provide her with care (notably by rubbing ice to cool her off) and offered the BOC investigators a firsthand account on what occurred.
“People in custody reported to Board staff that they became frustrated with the lack of response by clinical staff, so they became disruptive and refused to comply with staff orders to reenter the housing area, prompting the control post correction officer to activate a level ‘A’ alarm,” the report read.
To be clear, BOC investigations focus on operational failures rather than individual misconduct. Other agencies including the New York State Commission of Correction and the State Attorney General’s Office are also looking into Jones’ death.
Kaishian says more answers are needed for why Jones lost her opportunity to reduce her city jail sentence under “loss of good time” following several infractions. Further probes may reveal the veracity of the disciplinary claims.
The findings also reiterated how Jones was prevented from leaving her cell under the “medlock” designation on May 6, despite medical staff getting turned away the previous day. Kaishian sees it as rebranding solitary confinement, which the city maintains is no longer practiced.
“We know that the Department of Correction uses solitary confinement by referring to it by other terms,” said Kaishian. “But as we all know, solitary confinement by any other name is still solitary. So when the Department of Correction keeps incarcerated people in isolated cells, the fact that they call these cells ‘medlock’ when those individuals are not receiving medical treatment, doesn’t make it some sort of acceptable policy.”
The report coincides with a federal judge recently holding the city in contempt after failing to implement mandated reforms stemming from the class action lawsuit Nunez v. City of New York which alleged excessive force in city jails. Discussions to federally appoint a third-party receiver to oversee DOC-run facilities will resume this month. Another lawsuit, Agnew v. Department of Correction, found city jails failed to provide people in custody adequate medical care in 2021.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.