Squalid, crowded conditions return to Rikers Island intake center
Rikers Island’s intake center is overrun with detainees packed in small, fetid pens for days on end with little supervision — just like its previous admissions facility that was closed only nine months ago for the same violations, the Board of Correction revealed Tuesday.
The Eric M. Taylor Center, where most new DOC admissions are now processed and quarantined before they are assigned to a housing area, has become overrun with detainees in violation of city regulations, according to jailhouse sources and a board member who recently visited the facility.
“The admission area, the intake facility, the receiving room was packed with screaming people. … Some had been there for days,” said BOC board member Bobby Cohen, who visited the facility last week, during a public meeting Tuesday.
“There were 100-plus people crowded into pens without basic, basic services. Filthy pens without capacity to urinate in a urinal.”
Cohen said the sheer “volume” of people not getting access to medication, clothes, bathrooms, phone calls and transportation to their court dates was overwhelming.
“In the pens, people can’t get to court. … This is the post-arraignment period, and they are likely to have to go back to court in the next day or two, and there is so much chaos there that they can’t get back to court,” he said.
“It’s hard to say this ’cause I’ve been to a lot of jails and many, many visits, but it was really frightening. … I’ve never seen something as chaotic as this in the department.”
The conditions are strikingly similar to those seen last year in the Otis Bantum Correctional Center’s intake area, where detainees languished for days on end with little access to food, water, bathrooms and other basic services before it was shut down in September.
Images of the unit, revealed by The Post, showed dozens of men crammed together and sitting on floors covered in human excrement as they waited for days to be assigned a bed – a process the city Department of Correction is required to complete within 24 hours.
When OBCC’s intake was shut down in September, admissions were moved to EMTC, but nine months in, conditions have now deteriorated there as well as the facility reels from a lack of staff and a population that’s increased 22% since March.
Incidents where uniformed staff use force against detainees have been higher at the facility than the department-wide average for each month of the year so far, according to board member Freya Rigterink. Year-to-date, such incidents are up about 6%, DOC Commissioner Louis Molina acknowledged.
The average rate of slashings and stabbings is also higher at EMTC than the department-wide rate so far this year, and in three separate incidents in May, detainees were injured so badly in unsupervised housing areas, they were sent to the hospital, Rigterink said.
Further, Cohen noted most new DOC admissions aren’t undergoing body scans to check for drugs, weapons or other contraband upon their arrival, which is compounding overall safety concerns at the troubled jail complex, where six people have died in custody so far this year.
The facility, which sees about 45 new admissions a day, only conducted 40 body scans for the entire month of May, Cohen said.
In the first 12 days of June, just seven body scans were done, Cohen said.
“You’re trying to prevent drugs coming into the facility and weapons, but you’re doing very little about it. You have a great tool, and it’s not being used,” he said to Molina.
He noted that EMTC’s warden is aware of the issues, and when Molina was asked what’s being done to fix it, the DOC commish didn’t deny there was a problem.
“At this time, EMTC is the facility best suited to process new admissions, the CDC continues to recommend that correctional facilities maintain an isolation and quarantine procedures and remain nimble in case that new variants emerge, and more precautions are needed to be enacted,” Molina said in response.
“We recognize that we are still not where we want to be when it comes to staffing levels, I’ve said that repeatedly.”
He noted use of force incidents were significantly down at EMTC in March and April compared to last year but that they jumped back up in May after “resources” were diverted to other facilities seeing high rates of violence.
Board members said the deteriorating conditions create an unsafe situation for both staff and detainees, which experts say ultimately leads to higher rates of crime because of recidivism.
“EMTC is an unsafe, shuttered facility the city reopened two years ago to supposedly stop the spread of coronavirus,” said Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist with Prison Policy Initiative, to The Post. “Two years after its reopening, we can see that what’s always been true about jails is true about EMTC: It fails to keep hundreds of people safe.
“The only way for the city to stop this perpetual cycle of jail overcrowding is to reduce the jail population, which means halting unnecessary incarceration.”
