Politics
Rikers Inmates Are Routinely Denied Medical Care, Court Filing Says
The Legal Aid Society and Brooklyn Defender Services asked a judge to hold New York City’s Department of Correction in contempt of court.
New York City’s Correction Department has failed to take detainees to medical appointments thousands of times every month, in some cases never notifying them and later saying they “refused care,” according to a court filing on Thursday by groups that have sued over access to health care in the city’s jails.
Detainees are blocked from medical care in myriad ways, according to the filing. They include lack of transportation to medical appointments and a dearth of staff to accompany them. Sometimes, where people are in cells under lockdown, the Correction Department prevents detainees from leaving their units for medical care and limits phone access to ask for it, they said.
Since the case was brought in 2021, access to medical care in the city’s jails “has only worsened, and the department lacks both the basic competence and willingness to rectify this situation,” said Veronica Vela, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, which is representing the detainees along with Brooklyn Defender Services and the law firm Milbank LLP.
“We’re asking a court to hold them once again in contempt for this abject cruelty,” she said.
A spokesman with the Correction Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The filing on Thursday came less than a month after the death of Charizma Jones, a 23-year-old woman who was being held at Rikers Island when, health records show, guards failed to take her to an appointment. Over two days in May, medical workers tried to check on her in her cell, but correction officers stopped them from entering.
Ms. Jones later died in a coma at the Weill Cornell Burn Center, according to the Legal Aid Society, which called the case an “an egregious denial of access to medical care.”
