ALBAWABA- New York City has agreed to pay up to $53 million to settle a lawsuit on behalf of thousands of pretrial detainees who were wrongly held in isolation for up to 23 hours per day in small cells on Rikers Island and in Manhattan.
The settlement comes after the city's Correction Department failed to grant fair hearings to approximately 4,400 detainees between March 2018 and June 2022. The department wrongfully transferred detainees to restrictive housing, which sometimes included solitary confinement.
“The department brazenly ignored the Constitution,” said Eric Hecker, one of the lawyers who filed the class-action lawsuit. “They knew this was highly restrictive housing, and they knew it was illegal, but they kept using it anyway.”
The agreement, whose final size depends on how many wronged detainees claim their share, would be one of the largest city payouts ever involving the Correction Department. In November, the city agreed to pay as much as $300 million to thousands of jailed people whose releases were delayed after they made bail.
The settlement reinforces the right of pretrial detainees to live in communal housing, to be in common areas for 14 hours per day, and to eat together. They are entitled to engage in religious worship and other programming together. To revoke those rights would require formal notification and a fair hearing. Lawyers representing detainees in the jail complex on Rikers Island have argued that the city has mismanaged the lockup for years and have asked a federal judge to appoint an outsider to run it. The multimillion dollar payout is another blow to the agency as it tries to fend off a federal takeover.
The city argued that placing some detainees in restrictive housing reflected safety concerns. A jail rule makes clear that detainees who are presumed innocent should have reasonable leeway behind bars unless they have been formally found to have committed a serious infraction.
The agreement comes as legislative efforts to end solitary confinement are stalled. Advocates and researchers say prolonged isolation does long-lasting psychological damage to prisoners and impedes their rehabilitation.
Cesar Rivera spent four years at Rikers awaiting trial on homicide charges, of which he was ultimately acquitted. He was wrongfully housed for 485 days — 14 months at West Facility, and two months at North Infirmary Command — during the period covered by the settlement, spending most of that time alone.
“No human should be able to punish another human being like that, no matter what they did,” Mr. Rivera said.
