Use Of Force Spikes In NYC Jails Even As Number Of Inmates Falls

NEW YORK — New York City jail guards used force against inmates more often in the last year even as the jails' population continued its steady decline, records show.

The Department of Correction recorded 5,175 use-of-force incidents in the fiscal year that ended in June. That's a 10.7 percent spike from the 2017 fiscal year's 4,673 incidents and a nearly 37 percent increase from 2014.

The number includes any case of a correction officer taking physical action to stop an inmate from acting in a certain way, according to the DOC. That can range from grabbing an arm to more violent altercations that require medical attention.

The rate of incidents that caused serious injuries — an indicator the city defines as "critical" — more than doubled from 0.75 per 1,000 inmates in the 2017 fiscal year to 1.52 in 2018. The minor injury rate also rose to 17.31 per 1,000 inmates from 14.7 in 2017.

The figures, published Monday in City Hall's latest Mayor's Management Report, show a rise in such violence even with fewer people in the city's jail system, which includes the infamous Rikers Island complex.

The average daily jail population fell to 8,896 last fiscal year from 9,500 in 2017 and 11,408 in 2014. Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city officials have touted the decline as progress in the 10-year plan to close Rikers and replace it with four smaller jails, which they say will be possible once the population drops to 5,000.

The most recent spike in uses of force only bolsters the case for closing the notorious complex, said Brandon Holmes, a New York City campaign coordinator with the #CLOSErikers Campaign.

"The problem with Rikers is Rikers," Holmes said. "It’s beyond reform, it’s beyond repair, and the DOC’s reign of terror has to come to an end."

In the report, the DOC noted that just 3 percent of the uses of force caused a serious injury, while no one was hurt in more than 60 percent of those cases.

The department contends the recent exodus of detainees has left it dealing with a smaller but more dangerous group. More than 15 percent of the average daily population was gang-affiliated in the 2018 fiscal year, the DOC said, almost twice the rate seen in fiscal year 2014.

"As the population continues to fall dramatically, we are managing an increasingly challenging population, with a higher density of violent charges and gang affiliations," Peter Thorne, the DOC's deputy commissioner of public information, said in a statement.

The city has been working to rein in use of force over the last three years under a sweeping federal court settlement that aimed to address violence in the jails. The agreement provided for a federal monitor, who wrote in an April report that the DOC "continues to struggle to effectively manage" the use of force.

The department said it launched an "action plan" that month to curtail the use of force through several means, such as deploying "de-escalation teams" and bolstering the collection of gang intelligence to prevent violence from happening in the first place.

The plan resulted in some progress — 1,207 use of force incidents were recorded from April to June, down from more than 1,400 in the three months before that, the DOC said. Incidents involving serious injuries also fell from 35 to 27, according to the department.

But Holmes questioned the notion that a more violent group of detainees has driven the numbers up, as many people jailed at Rikers are awaiting trial for minor offenses.

Advocates don't have faith that the DOC, an agency lacking in transparency and accountability, will be able to reverse the trend, he said.

"We are invested in a future of New York city jails that is not controlled by the DOC," Holmes said.

(Lead image: A Department of Correction bus enters Rikers Island in March 2017.