NYC Jail Boss: No Solitary For Teen Inmates By Dec. 31
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- New York City's jails commissioner says he'll eliminate solitary confinement for 16- and 17-year-old inmates by the end of this year.
Commissioner Joseph Ponte announced the proposed policy change in a memo to Mayor Bill de Blasio last week.
Ponte has said publicly his goal was to end 23-hour confinement for adolescent inmates who break jailhouse rules.
Adolescent inmates account for about 300 of the roughly 11,500 inmates in the nation's second largest jail system. There are some 530 inmates daily in solitary and around 50 of them are teens.
The watchdog agency that oversees jails is also in the process of changing city rules on how solitary is used.
Last month, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara issued a scathing review of conditions for adolescent Rikers inmates. The report found juvenile jails are extremely violent and unsafe, the result of a deeply ingrained culture of violence in which guards routinely violate constitutional rights of teenage inmates and subject them to "rampant use of unnecessary and excessive force."
New York's jails have come under increasing scrutiny since The Associated Press first exposed the deaths of two seriously mentally ill inmates earlier this year — one who died of hyperthermia in a 101-degree cell and another diabetic inmate who sexually mutilated himself while locked alone for seven days inside a cell last fall.
Adding to the problems for jail officials, The New York Times reported that a confidential report showed that the city omitted hundreds of inmate fights from statistics turned over to federal authorities investigating possible civil rights violations. The newspaper also said the jail supervisors involved in the report had been promoted.
In response to the report, Bharara warned he may take legal action to force meaningful reforms.
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