Legal Aid Sues For Rikers' Records Of 'Brutal' Housing Units

NEW YORK CITY — A pair of lawsuits seek records detailing conditions in Rikers Island's most "brutal" housing unit as a crisis grows over the infamous jail.

Legal Aid Society lawyers filed the transparency lawsuits this week against the Department of Correction — an action first reported in Politico.

The suits followed unsuccessful attempts by Legal Aid attorneys to obtain records about living conditions, especially during a recent June heat wave, in the jail's highly restrictive Enhanced Supervision Housing units.

“DOC’s lack of transparency comes at an extremely dangerous time, as conditions in the city jails have become simply unacceptable by any humane standard,” Robert Quackenbush, staff attorney with the Prisoners’ Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society, said in a statement. “These lawsuits will shed light on the conditions in DOC’s most unsafe housing units during a time when basic jail operations have completely broken down.”

Rikers is in a full-blown crisis over its living conditions, a spate of inmate deaths and a staffing shortfall that keeps corrections officers working for punishingly long shifts, if they show up at all.

The controversy prompted Mayor Bill de Blasio this week to outline a series of fixes to address the situation, but critics argue they fall woefully short.

Legal Aid's lawsuits concentrate on Enhanced Supervision Housing unit, which has "become known for its brutal conditions of confinement," in a suit's words.

Past records have shown temperatures in the unit can reach 100 degrees in hot weather, a lawsuit states. With that context in mind, Legal Aid attorneys sought records of conditions during a recent, crushingly hot June heat wave.

"But in the middle of the summer, when the need for this information is at its zenith, DOC
stonewalled the request," the suit states.

Read the lawsuits here and here.