#NYC agrees to federal reforms to stop officer violence in city jails

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Rikers Island correctional facility
AP/Bebeto Matthews

The city Department of Correction has entered into an agreement with federal authorities to enact a number of reforms to curtail violence against inmates by officers at Big Apple jails, officials announced Thursday.

The agreement, known as a remedial order, will require DOC to make a number of changes to its day-to-day operations — including increase the number of deputy wardens at city jails, evaluating the mental health of inmates who have repeatedly clashed with officers, and deploying a new unit of investigators to probe all use of force incidents within 25 days.

The agreement is supposed to remedy the city’s “ongoing non-compliance” of court-ordered provisions that were imposed by a judge in a 2014 civil suit.

Federal authorities had joined the class-action suit, which alleged DOC had engaged in a pattern of using unnecessary violence on inmates.

The judge in the case ordered DOC in 2015 to implement a number of reforms to curtail excessive force, which were never followed, Manhattan federal prosecutors said Thursday.

The new agreement still needs final approval of the court before it’s put in place.

“While this Office recognizes that changing a decades-long culture of violence is not a simple task, the City and DOC must do better. By agreeing to adopt the measures set forth in this Remedial Order, they have taken a step in the right direction,” Acting Manhattan US Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement.