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© Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Nazeem Francis, 19, was charged with assaulting a correction officer at Rikers Island. He was sent to Albany County Correctional Facility and placed in solitary confinement, a practice that was banned three years ago in New York City for inmates younger than 22. |
By
ASHLEY SOUTHALL and
JAN RANSOM, The New York Times
Three years ago, when New York City banned
solitary confinement for inmates younger than 22 and curtailed it for others, Mayor Bill de Blasio held up the policy as a model for reform.
But since
the rules
were approved, the city has stepped up a longstanding practice of
transferring some inmates to correctional facilities elsewhere in the
state where no such restrictions exist. Dozens of New York City inmates,
including several teenagers, have ended up in solitary confinement.
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Transfers
of inmates 21 and younger increased sharply starting in 2015, the year
the city adopted the solitary ban, and except for a drop in 2017, the
number of such transfers has remained well above the levels seen before
the ban, according to Correction Department data.
At least 10 young inmates have been transferred from New York City
this year, including eight who are in solitary at one upstate jail, the
Albany County Correctional Facility, according to their lawyers.
New
York City has long had the power to make such transfers if an inmate is
especially vulnerable to attack or presents a high risk to other
inmates or to guards. But the sharp overall increase in transfers since
the solitary ban was put into place for city jails suggests that
transfers to other jurisdictions have become an end-run around the
city’s own rules on solitary confinement.
Defense lawyers say
transferring inmates allows city officials to avoid responsibility for
harsher conditions of confinement. A few of the lawyers are challenging
the transfers in court on the grounds that they violate inmates’ due
process rights, as well as state law and city rules.
Peter Thorne,
the chief spokesman for the Correction Department, said transfers are
based on “safety or security” and are not used as punishment.
Isolation of inmates has been shown to heighten risks of suicide and depression, especially among young people, and the city has not only limited the use of solitary confinement,
but has begun moving 16- and 17-year-olds off Rikers Island to comply
with a new state law that raised the age at which a person could be
charged as an adult to 18.
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© Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York Times
“They’ve just decided to send them to a place where they can be in permanent solitary and just forget about them,” said Jesse Hoberman-Kelly, a lawyer with four clients who have been in solitary confinement in Albany. |
But some of the reform efforts have
faced resistance, most notably from the union representing guards, which
has said serious sanctions like solitary must be preserved for violent
inmates.
Inmates who have been charged with assaulting guards are
among those most often transferred, in part because the Correction
Department cannot ensure their safety.
Martin F. Horn,
who was correction commissioner from 2003 to 2009, said that if such
inmates were harmed, it could raise the specter of payback: “It makes
sense to send them elsewhere where they’re not ‘hot,’” he said.
But
inmates said the transfers do not make them safer. All the inmates sent
to Albany said through their attorneys or in interviews that they have
been beaten by guards and put into solitary confinement for months.
Steven
Espinal, 19, who prosecutors say led an attack in February that left a
Rikers guard’s spine fractured, said guards stomped and kicked him so
badly when he arrived that he lost hearing in his left ear and passed
blood in his urine. He was hospitalized, then sentenced to 600 days in
solitary confinement for violating jail rules, his lawyer said.
While they beat him, Mr. Espinal said in an interview, the guards kept saying, “This ain’t New York City. We do what we want.”
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© Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York Times
Disciplinary forms show Davon Washington, 21, was sentenced to 360 days in solitary confinement for violating jail rules. |
Jesse
Hoberman-Kelly said he learned of the transfers in February, when he
began representing one of Mr. Espinal’s co-defendants, Samson Walston,
19. Both teenagers, and their two co-defendants,
are being held in Albany awaiting trial on a charge of gang assault for
the attack on the Rikers guard, Officer Jean Souffrant, which was
captured on video.
Sheriff Craig D. Apple Sr., who runs the Albany
jail, dismissed the inmates’ claims of abuse as “frivolous” and an
attempt to force their return to the city.
“My staff has not done anything to these people whatsoever,” Sheriff Apple said.
He
said it was the jail’s policy to isolate inmates who have assaulted
staff, regardless of their age, where the incident occurred, or
restrictions in the jurisdiction that sent them to Albany.
The solitary rules put in place in 2015 expanded a
restriction that only had applied to 16- and 17-year-olds.
Previously,
the city sent few inmates 21 and younger out of town each year,
according to city data. But the number rose to 16 in the first two years
of the ban. It declined in 2017,
but rose again this year. Currently, 10 young New York City inmates are
being held in outside jails, according to the Correction Department.
There are currently 811 inmates younger than 21 in the city’s jails.
Detailed
information about how transfers have been used under Mr. de Blasio was
not available because orders granted for safety reasons were destroyed
three years after they expired. That practice ended in April, when the
state Commission of Correction, which approves transfers, began
collecting data about inmates, including age, ethnicity, race and sex.
The Correction Department
operates
eight jails on Rikers Island and four others around the city. Together
the facilities can hold about 11,000 people, and the agency has more
than 10,400 uniformed officers.
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© Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
No fewer than eight people from New York City who are 21 or younger are being held in solitary at the Albany County Correctional Facility, according to their lawyers. |
But with fewer people being
detained, the jails are well below capacity. David A. Fullard, a former
correction captain who worked at Rikers for 30 years, said it was a
shame that the city has been unable to find a way to house high-risk
inmates without relying on other jurisdictions.
“You can’t figure
this out? You can’t pull a consultant to help you with that?” Mr.
Fullard, a professor at Empire State College, said. “It’s embarrassing.”
The case of
Kalief Browder,
a Bronx teenager who spent much of a three-year stint awaiting trial in
solitary confinement at Rikers Island, highlighted the dangers
associated with prolonged isolation. After prosecutors dropped their
case, he
committed suicide in 2015. After his death, Mr. de Blasio said, “
Kalief’s story helped inspire our efforts” at Rikers.
Martin
Guggenheim, a law professor at New York University, said what had been
“a great victory” is now being circumvented by a practice that he
believes is legally dubious.
The Correction Department has
implemented alternatives to solitary confinement, including secure units
where inmates receive therapy and counseling. States such as
Mississippi, California, Colorado, Illinois and Washington
have taken steps toward reducing the number of inmates placed in solitary.
Since
city jails implemented alternatives to solitary confinement for inmates
21 and younger, officers have complained they lost an effective tool
for controlling young inmates. Elias Husamudeen, the president of the
Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said the city is trying to
have it both ways by banning youth from solitary in its jails but
transferring them to jails where they can be isolated.
“The city,
the mayor would rather have someone do what we could do and pay hundreds
of dollars a day to have them there,” he said.
Between July 2013
and June 2017, the Correction Department said it paid more than $560,000
to jails in other counties to house city inmates. Albany County
receives $175 per inmate each day, Sheriff Apple said.
Inmates
sent to the Albany jail described a pattern of abuse that begins with
made-up misconduct and weapons violations. In written complaints and in
interviews with The New York Times and their lawyers, they said the
charges serve as a pretext for beating and isolating them.
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© Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Devin Burns, 18, Steven Espinal, 19, Samson Walston, 19, and Nazeem Francis, 19, during a court appearance in the Bronx last month. The four have been sent to the Albany County Correctional Facility, where they were placed in solitary. |
Those
charged with assaulting Rikers guards described taunts from guards in
Albany that suggest retaliation: “‘This is for Rikers,’” Nazeem Francis,
19, told his lawyer, Stuart J. Grossman. Mr. Francis and Devin Burns,
18, are also charged with assaulting Officer Souffrant.
Mr.
Espinal was taken to Albany Medical Center, where doctors scanned his
body and inserted a catheter in his penis, his lawyer, Ruben D.
Fernandez, said.
The Correction Commission, which is managed by a
three-member board appointed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and oversees local
jails and state prisons, is investigating eight grievances filed by two
city inmates who are being held in Albany, according to its spokeswoman,
Janine Kava.
Natalie Grybauskas, a spokeswoman for Mayor de
Blasio, said the city views transfers as the safest option for the
inmates, but she conceded, “That doesn’t eliminate the possibility of
any violence happening in any other jail.”
A spokesman for the Board of Correction, the city’s jail oversight panel, said it wants to see the practice minimized.
Albany
is a two-and-a-half hour drive from New York City, and lawyers complain
that inmates sent to the jail have missed court dates because they are
transported late or not at all, prolonging their cases and pressuring
them to accept plea deals.
The young men accused of assaulting
Officer Souffrant were already facing serious charges like attempted
murder, assault and gun possession. Correction officials believe they
are gang members, an affiliation that leads to tougher bail conditions
and sentences. Three of them had weapons when they arrived in Albany, a
Bronx prosecutor recently said in court.
Last year, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat,
introduced regulations
broadening oversight of solitary confinement in local jails, which the
state commission is expected to adopt this summer. The regulations
require jails to explain in writing any decision to place inmates in
solitary for more than a month or to restrict or deny recreation and
services.
In June,
legislation that would have restricted the use of solitary in state prisons and local jails passed the Democrat-led Assembly, but stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.
But
even without these changes, advocates for inmates say the city’s
practice of transferring young inmates appears to violate current law,
which requires correction officials to send inmates to the closest
suitable facilities and to take into consideration their lawyers’ and
families’ ability to reach them.
Nancy Ginsburg, the director of
The Legal Aid Society’s Adolescent Intervention and Diversion Project,
which is challenging Mr. Francis’s transfer, said, “I think that
nobody’s really paying attention to that.”
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