NYC jails death count rises as Rikers’ closure receives new roadmap

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Two people died in or immediately after NYC Department of Correction (DOC) custody this past week as the city jail population surpassed 7,000. The rise in the prison population is due to a combination of more judges setting bail and delayed prison transfers resulting from the recent illegal strike by corrections officers.

A recent report by the Lippman Independent Commission — the task force appointed by the city to plan the upcoming closure of Rikers Island — challenges the city’s acquiescence toward failing to replace the existing dilapidated jails and reduce the number of people held in them as solutions to prevent further custody deaths. The findings, which provided an updated blueprint for closing Rikers, came out last week coinciding with the two deaths.

Ariel Quidone died after he was reportedly found unresponsive in his jail cell and transferred to a hospital last week. However, the DOC did not respond to requests for comment as the 20-year-old was released on his own recognizance shortly before his passing.

Jail staff found Sonia Reyes unresponsive last Thursday morning, March 20. She was pronounced dead 30 minutes later despite EMS response. The 55-year-old woman was held at West Facility, which houses Rikers Island’s Communicable Disease Unit.

“Care for those in our facilities is a pillar of our mission and a loss of life weighs heavily on every member of service,” stated DOC commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie. “The department grieves this loss and shares our condolences with her loved ones. This death will be investigated thoroughly.”

Two other people died in DOC custody over the past month. Both were Black New Yorkers as jail conditions disproportionately impact people of color across the board. Black and Brown people make up 88% of people in DOC custody and 85% of uniformed staff.

The report described Rikers, which houses most city jails, as “decrepit, dysfunctional and violent.” The commission was re-appointed in 2023 by Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, with Mayor Eric Adams’ support, to roll out Rikers Island’s legally-mandated closure by August 31, 2027. Namesake Jonathan Lippman, the former top New York State judge, leads the task force.

Closing Rikers Island by 2027 relies almost entirely on transferring the remaining people in custody into four borough-based jails currently under construction. However, the replacement facilities’ completion date will miss the deadline by at least two years. In fact, construction of all the borough-based jails besides Brooklyn’s will likely run into the 2030s. COVID-19 and “market conditions” are to blame for the delays, according to the commission’s report.

“The commission acknowledges that it will take longer for the facilities to be complete and for Rikers to fully close,” said Dana Kaplan, a senior advisor for the Lippman Independent Commission. “That being said, the commissioners strongly believe that any discussion about extending the legal deadline to close Rikers Island has to be part of a full-throated commitment to move ahead a plan that will effectively close the jails on Rikers Island.

“And that plan has to include benchmarks [and] commitments to have real leadership and urgency demonstrated on reducing the jail population, making the type of necessary community based investments that will improve safety but also allow [for] a smaller number of people [to be] incarcerated and also change the cultures of the city’s jails.”

The city can potentially shave a year off the wait time by beginning building at the same time as designing the interior, according to the Department of Design and Construction. The commission also recommends employing “value engineering,” which enlists outside experts “to conduct a top-to-bottom review of construction, timeline, and program plans for the new facilities” and has previously reduced costs and months off build time in other local projects.

Some concurrent construction and design-work is currently underway at the Brooklyn borough-based jail, according to the report. The city also plans on using value engineering for the Manhattan borough-based jail in response to the commission’s multiple requests.

The promise of new jails

Borough-based jails promise “more humane” living conditions and direct proximity to criminal proceedings — almost all the facilities will be built right next to their corresponding courthouses. The DOC spent more than $30 million towards transporting people from Rikers Island to their court dates, sometimes for minor appearances.

Back in 2018, the de Blasio administration cut the planned number of borough-based jail beds from 6,000 to 4,000 (and was reduced further to 3,544 in 2019) based on then-upcoming bail reform laws and declining crime rates.

Yet currently city jails hold more than 7,000 people and around 84% of them are pretrial detainees, who remain innocent until proven guilty for the crime they are in custody for (to be clear, some were meant to be sent to state prisons but held up due to the recent strikes). The Adams administration has since increased the planned number of borough-based jail beds to 4,500 and reduced the number of projected secure hospital beds within the facilities.

“The current jail population is too large,” said Kaplan. “But we believe that it’s been artificially inflated, and that there are very, very safe, practical steps that can be taken to reduce that and make it possible for the entire population to fit in the new borough jails, particularly with some additional mental health beds.”

When COVID-19 struck, the city reduced the detainee population to just 3,809 people. Arrests rose after the height of the pandemic and more people ended up on Rikers Island. Yet major crime started decreasing drastically since last summer but the jail population continues to rise.

The average person held on Rikers Island for pretrial detention waits “269 days and counting waiting for their day in court,” according to the report. While past research failed to find correlations between pretrial detention and case time delays, there is of course more urgency compared to defendants who are released.

Clearing up backlogs through case processing reforms can realistically reduce the jail population by 1,200 to 1,600 and potentially up to 2,000, according to the commission. Those reforms include clear case schedules, case conferences to ensure progress and firm trial dates detailed in the New York State Office of Court Administration’s plans. A Brooklyn pilot program implemented many such practices at the Kings County Supreme Court, leading to an 11% increase in closed cases within six months of the indictment.

Mental health also factored heavily in the commission’s findings for the growing jail population, deeming Rikers Island as the second largest psychiatric facility in the country. Only Los Angeles County jail houses more people living with mental illness. 57% of people held on Rikers receive some sort of mental healthcare. 21% are diagnosed with serious mental illness.

The report points to the underlying dilemma for judges when someone with a mental health condition is arrested. Should they send them to Rikers where they can receive treatment but subject them to jail conditions? Or release them back into the community “without realistic options for either, and therefore taking an inordinate risk the person will reoffend.” Instead, the commission suggests more services outside of jails like opening 250 residential treatment beds and expanding supportive housing.

The DOC responded to several recommendations. A suggestion toward combating correctional staff attribution was pushed back on, as the department pointed to a 35% growth in registration credited to outreach efforts. The DOC also highlighted improvements in transportation to scheduled court dates and community input for reentry and behavioral health services.

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.