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City Agrees to Pay Rikers Inmates It Forced Back Into Solitary Confinement
For years, it was a rule in New York City’s jail system: If an inmate at Rikers Island who had been serving a stretch in solitary confinement before release returned to the jail, the person would be forced back into solitary no matter how much time had passed.
The city dropped the rule, called the old time policy, in 2015, in response to a lawsuit, but by then hundreds of people had served long stints in solitary confinement at the notorious jail complex.
On Monday, a federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn gave preliminary approval to a class-action settlement in which the city agreed to pay a total of $5 million to 470 people who were put in solitary confinement under the policy between Nov. 23, 2012, and Sept. 16, 2015. The lawsuit that prompted the settlement, Roy Parker et al. v. the City of New York, alleged that the practice was inhumane and violated pretrial detainees’ due process rights.
Judge Cheryl L. Pollak, in her order, said the settlement was “fair and reasonable.” Her decision gives the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Alexander A. Reinert and Eric Hecker, the green light to begin notifying clients to file claims or objections.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, each eligible plaintiff will receive $175 for each day in solitary, and those who were under 18 or had been found to have a serious mental illness will receive $200 per day.
“The conditions in solitary confinement at Rikers are awful, and these men and women should not have been there,” Mr. Hecker, a lawyer at Cuti Hecker Wang L.L.P., said. “We’re happy they are getting some compensation for what they went through.”
Mr. Reinert, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, said he believed this was the first case in the country in which a court awarded compensation to a class of pretrial detainees wrongfully held in solitary confinement. The number of people covered by the class action was limited by a three-year statute of limitations, he said.
The settlement comes amid a continuing debate over the use of solitary confinement. While jail and prison authorities and unions have argued that it is a necessary tool to maintain safety and order, former prisoners, researchers and reform advocates say it is overused and harms inmates.
Inmates are often sent to solitary confinement as punishment for violating rules, such as by fighting guards or bringing in contraband.
Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has outlined a plan to close Rikers, the city has moved away from solitary confinement.
Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department, said the agency was “pleased” with the settlement’s approval. Rescinding the old policy was one of several reforms adopted by the city and the Department of Correction over the last four years, “which have reduced punitive segregation use by more than 85” percent, he noted.
According to the Correction Department, the number of inmates housed daily in “punitive segregation,” the term officials use for solitary confinement, decreased to 114 in 2017 from 874 in 2013.
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