An inmate at Rikers Island died Monday, marking the jail's seventh in-custody dying this yr.
Matthew McDermott
New York Metropolis’s Division of Correction mentioned an inmate at Rikers Island died on Monday, marking the seventh in-custody dying on the troubled jail system this yr.
The person, who has but to be publicly recognized, died round 1:30 a.m. on the George R. Vierno Heart, one among a number of amenities on Rikers, the DOC mentioned.
Additional particulars concerning the dying weren’t instantly launched however a jailhouse supply mentioned two cans of Narcan, that are used to reverse opioid overdoses, had been used on the detainee earlier than he died.
Two detainees have already died from obvious opioid overdoses to date this yr and a third dedicated suicide.
A Board of Correction probe discovered staffing points contributed to a few extra deaths earlier this yr.
The DOC has been reeling from a surge in violence and a staffing disaster.
DOC Commissioner Louis Molina on Friday out of the blue closed the Otis Bantum Correctional Heart after the BOC revealed squalid and unsafe situations had returned to the jail’s consumption unit, The Submit reported.
One other jailhouse supply known as the scenario on Rikers “dire.”
“It’s only a matter of time earlier than somebody dies once more,” the supply mentioned. “It’s solely going to worsen.”
Freedom Agenda, an advocacy group working to shut Rikers, lambasted the DOC for the seventh dying in lower than six months.
“Because the Division of Correction generates plans to create plans, New Yorkers proceed to endure and die of their custody,” Freedom Agenda’s co-founder Darren Mack mentioned in an announcement.
“Rikers ought to have closed way back, and by now, judges, prosecutors, and all elected officers know that nobody is secure there. We want instant decarceration, like the trouble we noticed in the beginning of Covid-19, with motion from judges, prosecutors, and the DOC Commissioner with the assist of the Mayor. With out that, they're selecting to let individuals die.”
Final yr, 16 individuals died in-custody.
Molina mentioned the DOC was “saddened to listen to” concerning the dying on Monday.
“Our ideas are together with his household and family members,” he mentioned in an announcement. “Each particular person in our custody is somebody’s son, daughter, brother or sister, and it's an particularly heartbreaking tragedy to be taught that a liked one has handed away whereas incarcerated.”
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