Two council members have proposed bills aimed at fixing the longstanding problem that city correction officials have had in rapidly notifying families and the public of deaths and serious injuries at city jails, including Rikers Island.
Back in August 2021, for example, after Brandon Rodriguez hung himself in a locked shower stall, his mother found out about his death via a Facebook post from a mutual friend, not via city officials, The Daily News previously reported.
In May and June 2023, a huge controversy bloomed over the failure of correction officials to disclose five serious incidents including two deaths in a timely manner.
The two new bills would mandate notification and broaden the circle of people who are supposed to be informed by the Correction Department, including the lawyers of record in a given case. They would also require medical staffers to make notifications, a role that has previously been left to DOC, often a low-level staffer or a chaplain.
“We are all aware of too many stories of people suffering serious injuries or dying and family members are not informed,” said Council Member Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn), a sponsor of one of the bills. “There is a moral obligation on the part of DOC to let the immediate family members know, and this bills make sure that happens.”
Restler’s bill, known as Int. 412, would require CHS to ask detainees to provide emergency contact information and to notify those people within one hour in the event of a confirmed suicide attempt, hospitalization or serious injury.
Council Member Carlina Rivera (D-Manhattan) is also sponsoring one of the bills, known as Int. 423. Her bill would require DOC and Correctional Health Services, the agency which oversees medical care in the jails, to make death notifications.
The agencies would be required to contact the deceased’s lawyer, the city Medical Examiner, the Board of Correction and make a public statement, in addition to notifying a relative.
The bill also codifies requirements to report each death, investigate each death and issue reports on those deaths. It also would direct DOC to update the Council on any discipline meted out to staff for breakdowns that may have contributed to jail deaths.
While DOC had been doing some of these things, the bills would make them mandatory under law.
This bill would also create a new oversight panel known as the Jail Death Review Board to examine systemic problems that repeatedly contribute to deaths, such as the failure of staff to conduct required checks on detainees – a failure found by the BOC in multiple reports over the past three years.
Rivera said the bills had their beginnings in a sequence in May 2023 when the Correction Department failed to notify oversight bodies of five serious incidents, including two deaths, in a timely manner.
In one of the deaths, that of Joshua Valles, city officials initially claimed he died of a heart attack, but the autopsy showed he had suffered a fractured skull.
The federal monitor tracking violence and use of force in the jails issued a scalding report on the lapses, saying they “raised serious concerns about the city’s and department’s ability to accurately and timely report serious and/or life-altering injuries.”
Then DOC Commissioner Louis Molina pleaded with the monitor not to release the damning report.
“To finally bring reform to Rikers requires a public accounting,” Rivera said Wednesday. “Always keeping in mind the families of those impacted and sensitivity around identifying those we have lost, this bill will bring the transparency we have needed for some time.”
A hearing on the two bills and several other new pieces of jail-related legislation is slated for Sept. 24. There were 16 jail deaths in 2021, the final year of the de Blasio administration, followed by 19 in 2022, 9 in 2023 and five so far in 2024. A total of 33 people have died in the jails during Mayor Adams’ tenure.
The Correction Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
