What Will It Take to Stop Inmate Jail Deaths?

Dariel Ali, right, said that Rikers Island pushed his friend Dashawn Carter to take his life. (Photo by Dashiell Allen) Courtesy the Village Sun

So far this year, we have seen the deaths of ten people who were in  or recently released from the custody of the New York Department of Correction (DOC).

They are the latest in a tragic toll that reached double digits last year. Some 21 people in custody died in 2021, including while I served as First Deputy Commissioner of DOC.

As I offer my condolences to their loved ones, it is important to say that every single one of these deaths is preventable.

In this country, our jails and prisons are filled with people who suffer from mental illness and substance abuse disorders.

Our city mirrors this national trend. Even as the overall jail population has sharply declined over recent years, the percentage of people with mental health diagnoses has soared from 32 percent in 2011 to 53 percent in 2021.

Authorities in New York must take action now before another person overdoses on a fatal combination of fentanyl and heroin, as Tarz Youngblood did on February 27.

Or commits suicide, like Dashawn Carter on May 7.

Or suffers for days without medical care, like George Pagan did before dying on March 17.

These people are detained in facilities that are not structurally designed to meet their needs. They are not managed in a way that keeps them safe – or in too many cases, even keeps them alive.

There needs to be a complete overhaul of the entire system of staff management, including real-time documentation, in our city jails to address the ongoing problem of posts remaining unstaffed.

As the Board of Correction documented in great detail in their report issued on May 9, posts on housing units were unstaffed when at least three people died earlier this year.

Recent reporting about the June 20 death of Anibal Carrasquillo from what may have been an overdose suggests that posts may not have been properly staffed on his unit on the night he died, too.

DOC leadership and supervisors have no effective means of knowing where their staff are, or are supposed to be, at any given time. DOC must adopt an electronic time management and tracking system that records where staff are supposed to be, and when staff report to their posts.

Supervisory tours should also be tracked electronically. Until or even after such a system is put in place, managers need to actually walk the housing units themselves to monitor staff attendance at their assigned posts and take real-time action to fill posts left vacant.

Such managerial in-person surveillance, if done properly and without warning, might even serve to deter some uniformed staff from arriving late or leaving their posts unstaffed.

DOC must also ensure that people in custody have timely access to medical and mental health services.

First, DOC must institute a more effective system and partnership with Correctional Health Services to identify, monitor, and grant immediate access to critical mental health services for people who may cause themselves harm – which again, requires staff to report to their posts, remain at their posts, and perform their duties.

Second, while people have been denied access to medical and mental health care due to officers being unavailable to transport them, this is also part of a larger culture of dysfunction, hopelessness, and indifference that must be addressed immediately.

George Pagan not only missed nine appointments in the six days leading up to his death because staff were unavailable to transport him. But as he lay suffering, he was cared for only by other men in custody.

This is a tragic example that should infuriate us all, including the men and women in DOC who come to work every day and want to ensure the safety and wellbeing of those remanded to their care. To do nothing in the face of such suffering is a complete abdication of responsibility, and there must be accountability.

Tarz Youngblood. Courtesy Omonowale Hewitt

The DOC must also be transparent about staffing issues and missed medical appointments.

In an ongoing lawsuit around the latter, in which DOC was recently held in contempt for failing to provide court-ordered access to medical appointments, it was revealed that DOC is now only reporting the number of people who have missed medical appointments, as opposed to the number of appointments that have been missed.

This is a critical difference, and the new methodology underplays the seriousness of the problem.

Pagan, for example, was not transported to nine appointments in six days. Under the new system, this would be counted as one person missing appointments, which would provide a skewed and inaccurate picture of the actual harm caused.

For people who have chronic medical and mental health conditions or otherwise require ongoing care, every single missed appointment causes them harm that may compound over time, such as in the case of Pagan, who lost his life.

The deadly conditions at our city jails have been decades in the making, but they must not be additional years in the undoing.

Rikers Island is scheduled to close in 2027. That time cannot come soon enough. But we need action and transparency now.

We also must remain vigilant to ensure that the culture of passive aggressive dissent by abusing sick time, or going AWOL, or the overwhelming sense of hopelessness that results in operational neglect is not simply transplanted into the planned borough-based facilities.

Our new facilities must be centered on the humanity of the people who work there, the people held there, and the families and loved ones who visit.

Stanley Richards

Stanley Richards is the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of The Fortune Society, a service and advocacy non-profit organization. A formerly incarcerated man of color with over three decades of experience in the criminal justice field,

Stanley served as First Deputy Commissioner of Programs and Operations at the New York City Department of Correction (DOC) from July 2021 to January 2022—the first formerly incarcerated person to do so. Follow the Fortune Society on Facebook & Instagram: fortunesociety, or on Twitter: @thefortunesoc