The Board of Correction, a nine-member panel authorized by City Charter to oversee the Department of Correction, will hold a hearing April 17 on the proposed changes to the "Minimum Standards for New York City Correctional Facilities," which were imposed in 1978 amid a crisis of violence and overcrowding in the city's jails. The board says its review of the standards took more than a year and was guided by recent court decisions and practices in other jail systems.
"The point is, it's been 30 years since anyone has taken a serious look at this," says board Chairperson Hildy Simmons, a philanthropist who was named to the board by local judges in 2004 and made chair by Mayor Bloomberg in 2005. "It was the right thing to do – and long overdue."
The proposed new standards were released for public review and comment in late January, and Simmons says she welcomes input that helps the board shape the final guidelines.
The Department of Correction (DOC) absorbs more than 100,000 inmates a year at nine jails on Rikers Island, two hospital wards, the Manhattan Detention Complex, and a barge docked off Hunts Point. DOC spokesman Steve Morello says several of the proposed new rules are just permanent versions of variances to the minimum standards that the board has granted over the years. One example is the proposal to reduce the square footage required for each prisoner housed in a dormitory, effectively increasing the potential capacity of dorms from 50 to 60 inmates. The DOC is already doing this, and claims the decreased space hasn’t triggered violence.
Other proposals reflect the way the world has evolved since 1978, according to Morello. "It has to do a lot with a changing environment inside and outside the jails in terms of criminal and terrorist activity," he says. The board's draft rules would allow the DOC to read inmate mail and listen to inmate phone calls without a warrant, and prevent the delivery of mail, packages or publications in order to "to protect public safety or maintain facility order and security.” Morello says he's not aware of current problems with inmate publications, or any trouble the DOC has had obtaining warrants, and acknowledged that the rules were “prospective,” addressing potential future needs.
Among the new proposals – some of which describe practices already in place under variances – are measures that would:
• permit jails to restrict access to showers and recreation yards when inmates misbehave on the way to bathing or recreation facilities;
• appoint DOC officials to vet religious advisors before they work in the jails and decide on whether to allow new religious practices;
• change a requirement that Spanish translators be in every facility to a rule that mandates efforts to ensure "that all non-English speaking prisoners understand all written and oral communications";
• allow law libraries to schedule two of their 10 operating hours each day during times when general population inmates are locked in their cells, so inmates in protective, medical or punitive segregation – separated from the general population – can use the libraries;
