Under Mayor Eric Adams, New York City’s system for investigating sexual abuse allegations at Rikers Island is faltering, according to a Sept. 20 report by Matt Katz and a Gothamist analysis of city data.
The Department of Correction is grappling with a growing backlog of cases, as both city and federal guidelines requiring timely investigations are being ignored.
In 2023, more than 45% of the department’s investigations into sexual abuse and harassment claims exceeded the 90-day deadline mandated by local and federal regulations. This marks a significant departure from 2020 and 2021, when the department fully adhered to the 90-day rule before Adams took office.
Data for the first half of 2024 on detainee sexual abuse allegations is unavailable, as the Department of Correction has missed the deadline to file its required report by over a month, a violation of city law, according to the Board of Correction, which oversees the city’s jails.
The decline in compliance comes amidst a wave of lawsuits filed by more than 700 women, alleging sexual abuse by Rikers staff over nearly five decades. Forty of those incidents are claimed to have occurred in the past six years. Shockingly, five of the officers accused in these cases are still employed by the correction department, including three at the women’s jail on Rikers Island.
Criminal justice experts believe the lawsuits should have triggered formal investigations by the Department of Correction. However, the department has refused to confirm whether it is probing the claims, and Gothamist’s review did not account for the lawsuits.
Despite growing pressure from lawmakers, Adams, who is facing multiple federal corruption charges, including bribery, wire fraud, and accepting illegal foreign campaign contributions, has so far resisted calls for an independent investigation into the women’s allegations. The plaintiffs are seeking $14.7 billion in damages.
Even before the recent delays in investigations at Rikers, city investigators have seldom substantiated detainees’ sexual abuse allegations against officers and staff. A Gothamist analysis of data reveals that since 2015, nearly 1,500 abuse claims were filed by detainees against correctional staff, but only seven — just half a percent — were validated.
Former jail officials and criminal justice experts argue that such a low substantiation rate suggests that these allegations are not being thoroughly investigated.
The substantiation rate is similarly low for sexual assault and harassment claims made by detainees against other inmates, which represent the majority of complaints. The overall substantiation rate for complaints against both staff and detainees dropped from 4.5% in 2022 to just 3.4% in 2023. According to the Department of Justice, this is significantly below the national average for substantiated claims in correctional facilities, which stood at 6% in 2020.
Former executive director of the Board of Correction, Martha King, told Gothamist, “Sexual abuse must be taken as seriously as all other forms of violence in the city’s jails.” During King’s tenure, the board implemented new requirements for the Department of Correction to bring the city into compliance with federal regulations.
King added: “With focused attention from leadership and increased monitoring by the board of correction, this backsliding can be stopped.”
Spokespeople for both the Department of Correction and Mayor Adams did not respond to Gothamist.
Despite having a relatively large staff dedicated to investigating claims, the department’s compliance record has deteriorated under Adams. As of last year, it employed 40 investigators and eight supervisors to handle PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) cases, according to a federal court filing. This is a larger team than in 2019, when the backlog of cases was near zero, as noted in Board of Correction minutes from that period.
Sarena Townsend, a former deputy correction commissioner who oversaw misconduct investigations from 2018 to 2022, stated that the system for protecting detainees from abuse is ineffective because the current leadership lacks commitment to the issue, and victims no longer trust the process.
“It has devolved into a series of checking boxes rather than fixing the issue,” Townsend told Gothamist. “You can only show that you’re reliable if people report to you and you take it seriously. But people aren’t reporting to you because you haven’t proven to be reliable and effective.”
Townsend added: “People don’t want to come forward, and you can’t blame them half the time.”
This article is adapted from a longer report in The Gothamist.
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