The city of New York will pay as much as $53 million to 4,413 people who were held in harsh, isolated conditions at Rikers Island and Manhattan jails between 2018 to 2022, according to a settlement agreement filed in federal court on Wednesday.
The agreement, which must be approved by a judge, stems from a class-action lawsuit filed by former detainees alleging that the city Department of Correction violated both city regulations and the U.S. Constitution when it held them in cells where they lacked access to natural light, communal gatherings, and programs like educational classes.
“They were unable to move freely, as pretrial detainees have a right to do,” said Alex Reinert, a Cardozo Law School professor and one of the attorneys on the case. He said the detainees alleged to have violated jailhouse rules were also not afforded due process before being punished by being placed in isolated conditions.
The case, Miller v. City of New York, involved detainees held in restrictive isolation at two jails on Rikers and one unit at the former Manhattan Detention Complex.
Some of the conditions allegedly experienced by the detainees would be described as “solitary confinement” under internationally accepted humanitarian standards. But that term has widely different interpretations, as Gothamist has previously reported. Detainees and members of the oversight agency the Board of Correction say people are sometimes held in solitary-like conditions, including shower cages, for longer than a day at a time. Last year, a man was isolated for more than 30 hours before his death.
Still, the correction department's commissioner has said that solitary confinement does not exist in any form in the jails.
If the judge approves the agreement, those affected would be notified within two months in order to file claims. They will be eligible to receive $400 for each day they were held in those facilities, or $450 if they were younger than 22 or diagnosed with a serious mental illness at the time. The average amount that each person receives will be about $9,000, the attorneys said.
Watchdogs say that conditions restricting movement at Rikers Island persist. Under questioning at a Board of Correction meeting last month, Commissioner Louis Molina acknowledged that officers put some detainees into restraint desks, which involve leg shackles and handcuffs, during group activities like classes and recreation. On WNYC last year, Molina promised the restraint desks would no longer be used.
Over several years, city officials and advocates for detainees had developed a new system for more humanely housing those accused of violating rules while locked up, giving them more out-of-cell time. But that new system was put on hold last year due to supposed staffing shortages with the blessing of the multimillion-dollar federal monitor who oversees the city's jails.
Spokespeople for the Department of Correction did not respond to requests for comment.
A bill banning solitary confinement in city jails is stalled in the City Council after a hearing in the fall that was preceded by raucous dueling protests between advocates for detainees and correction officers.
At a rally last year in support of the bill, Candie Johnson, a former detainee at Rikers, said she spent more than 1,000 days in solitary at the jail complex.
“When people ask me to describe solitary, the only word I can use is torture,” she said, describing how she had to use her jail-issued jumper in place of sanitary napkins, which weren’t provided. “And they gave me more days in solitary for destroying [Department of Correction] property, which was the jumper.”
This isn’t the only big payout the city is on the hook for due to conditions in the jails. Last year, detainees held after they were supposed to be released on bail were awarded $300 million in a class-action lawsuit settlement agreement.
