NYC should pay Rikers inmates $3M for failing to take them to medical appointments, say detainee lawyers
New York City should pay Rikers Island detainees $3 million for failing to bring them to medical appointments between February and October, lawyers representing detainees told a Bronx judge.
The Legal Aid Society and Brooklyn Defender Services want the city to pay detainees $250 for each of the 12,354 missed medical appointments which occurred because Department of Correction staff did not escort them to their doctor visits or there was no space in the jail clinics, according to papers filed in Bronx Supreme Court.
“Despite having already been held in contempt by a court, DOC has denied thousands more people access to medical appointments, and the department must be held in contempt once again for its continued failure to abide by explicit legal obligations and various court orders,” the public defender organizations said in a statement.
In a statement, city Law Department spokesman Nicholas Paolucci said the majority of missed appointments are because detainees refuse to go as is their right. The number attributable to lack of an escort represents only less than half a percent of all scheduled appointments, he said.
“DOC is doing everything it can to meet the demanding number of scheduled appointments for the people in its custodial care. More than 525,000 appointments have been scheduled so far this year,” Paolucci said.
The Correction Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The demand contained in a legal motion filed Monday stems from a class action lawsuit, Agnew v. City of New York, which alleges that city jail officials systematically failed to bring many people to appointments for more than a year.
In August, Judge Elizabeth Taylor, who is presiding over the case, ordered the city to pay $200,000 in contempt fines for missed visits prior to February. The city is appealing the ruling.
Taylor initially ruled the city was failing to perform its responsibility to get people to appointments in December 2021 and ordered the Correction Department to fix the problem. She then found the city in contempt in May for failing to do so.
Key to the judge’s decision was an admission by then Chief of Facility Operations Ada Pressley who acknowledged in an affidavit it was impossible for the Correction Department to comply because of staff absenteeism.
The 12,354 missed appointments between February and October does not include visits missed for a range of other reasons, including lock-downs. Legal Aid has previously alleged that in some cases, staff fudged the numbers to suggest prisoners refused to go to visits when they had not.
In November, the Board of Correction reported a link between missed medical visits and some of the deaths that took place in the jails in 2022. In the death of Dashawn Carter on May 7, for example, the board reported he missed 92 visits including 76 because staff didn’t escort him.
Elijah Muhammad, who died of a fentanyl overdose July 10, missed 118 visits from September 2020 until his death including 100 because he wasn’t produced, the board said.
“People in the jails continue to suffer countless harms from delay and outright denial of access to injury care, chronic care, and critical medications, contributing to the highest death rate in DOC facilities in over 25 years,” the public defender groups said.
Nineteen people have died in DOC custody in 2022, the most since 2013, when there were 23 — but the jail population is about half the size it was then.
