Solitary Confinement Ban Goes Before NYC Council As Rikers Deaths Rise

NEW YORK CITY — Sixteen inmate deaths this year. A brewing controversy over a top jail official's move that kept the last death off the books. And growing calls for a federal takeover of long-troubled Rikers Island.

Those events will form the backdrop of a City Council hearing Wednesday over a bill introduced by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams to ban solitary confinement in the city's jails.

"Solitary confinement is torture, and for some New Yorkers– Kalief Browder, Layleen Polanco, Brandon Rodriguez, and too many others – it has been a death sentence," Williams said in a statement when he introduced the ban in June.

A "death sentence" is how many city officials and advocates increasingly view confinement — solitary or not — at Rikers Island and the city's jails run by the Department of Correction.

Last week, two inmates died after time in the city's jails.

The first — Gregory Acevedo, 48 — took a fatal jump off a five-story jail barge in an escape attempt.

Then, Elmore Robert Pondexter suffered cardiac arrest in Rikers Island, advocates said. He died in Bellevue Hospital after the city's jail boss Louis Molina emailed subordinates to grant him compassionate release and keep him "off the Department's count," according to the New York Times — a move that many critics saw as a tactic to disguise the 16th inmate death this year and avoid negative press.

"To date, the Department has failed to demonstrate accountability for the death toll, but instead rests in obfuscation and delay," attorneys with The Legal Aid Society said in a statement.

"With each death this year, City Hall and DOC leadership have stonewalled the public and refused to provide timely and accurate information."

Mayor Eric Adams, in a response to a reporter's question Tuesday about Molina's email, attacked the New York Times story.

He contended that Molina's move to grant compassionate release gave Pondexter's family a chance to visit him at the hospital before he died.

"I was a bit surprised by the tone of the story,” he said.

But even before Pondexter's death, advocates amped up calls for a federal takeover of Rikers Island.

Adams brushed off those calls and said he wasn't worried about a takeover.

He also alluded to Williams' and some Council Members' recent statements that conditions at Rikers were no longer "atrocious" after Molina's moves to fix problems at the facility.

“Heck yeah, I’m confident,” he said about Molina.