Federal prosecutors plan to sue New York City over widespread civil rights violations in the handling of adolescent inmates at Rikers Island, making clear their dissatisfaction with the city’s progress in reining in brutality by guards and improving conditions at the jail complex, a new court filing shows.
The decision to go to court comes more than four months after the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, issued a blistering report that cited a pervasive and “deep-seated culture of violence” directed at teenage inmates at Rikers. The report found rampant use of excessive force by correction officers, the overuse of solitary confinement and an ineffectual system of investigating assaults by guards. Weeks earlier, an investigation by The New York Times documented the cases of 129 inmates who had been seriously injured in altercations with guards last year.
The federal report — the fruit of a 2 ½-year investigation by Mr. Bharara’s office — proposed more than 10 pages of remedial measures for the city’s Correction Department and warned that if significant changes were not made at Rikers, the Justice Department could file a lawsuit and seek court-ordered reforms.
Document: Investigation Into Violence Toward Teenagers at Rikers Island
“While the United States had hoped to reach a speedy resolution with the city on these critical issues,” Mr. Bharara’s office said in the filing on Thursday, “thus far insufficient progress has been made.”
Instead of filing a separate lawsuit against the city, Mr. Bharara’s office asked a federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday for permission to join in an existing class-action lawsuit over brutality at Rikers, Nunez v. City of New York, that had been filed by the Legal Aid Society and two private law firms, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady and Ropes & Gray. In contrast to Mr. Bharara’s investigation of the treatment of adolescent inmates, the Nunez case focuses on all Rikers inmates, regardless of age.
Mr. Bharara’s office said in its filing that it would be most efficient to resolve all of the claims related to Rikers “with a single, comprehensive remedy.” Settlement discussions had already been underway in the Nunez case, and prosecutors said Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration and the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Nunez lawsuit had agreed to the government’s joining the case.
“Given the longstanding sad state of affairs at Rikers Island, our impatience is more than understandable,” Mr. Bharara said at a news conference on Thursday. “As I’ve said before, one way or another, we will get enduring and enforceable reform at Rikers Island.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered