Prison Uniforms, Warrant-free
Phone Monitoring Allowed
By Charles Maldonado
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
NEW YORK — New York City’s jails, which already held a daily average of more than 13,000 inmates in 2006, will not face more crowding as the New York City Board of Correction Thursday unanimously rejected a proposal to increase the number of inmates allowed in dormitories from 50 to 60. The proposed change was one of several highly controversial amendments to the standards for the Department of Correction that the board voted on Thursday during a four-hour session at the Department of City Planning in Lower Manhattan.
“We really averted a disaster here today,” said Professor Michael Mushlin of Pace Law School. Mushlin has been working with activist groups like the Legal Aid Society, lobbying the board to vote ‘no’ on many of yesterday’s 46 proposed amendments. Mushlin also said he breathed a sigh of relief when the board struck a change that would have allowed certain inmates, such as those in punitive segregation or in contagious disease units, to be locked in their cells for as long as 23 hours at a time, a policy he called “inhumane.”
“It’s been called torture,” he said.
The board did, however, approve some of the criticized policy changes yesterday, including one item that will allow the Department of Correction to require prisoners to wear uniforms. The amendment was presented as a response to safety concerns that a significant amount of jailhouse violence is a result of inmates wearing expensive street clothes.
Not everyone agreed. One man, an ex-Riker’s Island inmate who was seated in the audience, was almost kicked out of the meeting when he spoke up against the change.
“The clothes do not provoke the violence,” said Carlos Sabater, 40, of Harlem. Sabater blamed correction officers “not doing their jobs,” for most of the violence in the city’s jails and said that such restrictions would only lead to more incidents.
“It’s just going to breed more anger and more rage against the system,” Sabater said.
The board also approved several measures that will give prison staff greater freedoms to listen in on inmates’ phone calls and to examine their mail. Search warrants are currently required, but in the future a warden’s order based on reasonable belief that communications could result in a public danger or jail security problem, will be enough to justify these actions.
The measures would not include “privileged” communications, such as correspondence with clergy, lawyers, the Department of Correction or personal physicians.
“This is a big deal,” said board member Michael Reagan. “We listened to a horrendous story from the Queens District Attorney about a domestic violence crime that was planned over the phone on Rikers Island.”
The changes require a reason to believe that there is a danger to public safety or the security of the jail.
“I have a problem with ‘reasonable belief.’ Whose reason? Whose belief?” said board member Richard Nahman, who voted against the proposals. “I’m uncomfortable giving the warden these powers.”
Nahman also questioned how the changes would be implemented, particularly those related to incoming newspapers, magazines and other publications. As a result of yesterday’s vote, jail employees will be able to censor incoming publications if there is a “substantial belief” that they could cause a danger to the jail.
Several of the board members took issue with how this change will be implemented.
“How will they know it’s dangerous without reading them? What if they’re delivered inside an envelope? They’ll have to open them,” said board member Stanley Kreitman.
Board Chair Hildy Simmons stressed, as she did on several occasions, that it was the department’s, rather than the board’s, job to determine procedure for implementing the changes. John Boston of the Legal Aid Society called this attitude “a lack of attention to detail.”
“They’ve given over to the Department of Correction as much power as the Department of Correction wants to take,” he said. “We will surely be paying close attention to implementation.”
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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