The city Department of Correction is experiencing a shakeup as the city announces a new initiative to keep inmates from harming themselves. NY1′s Michael Herzenberg filed the following report.
Johnny Perez, 35, just got out of prison last year.
“Feels good. Sort of a culture shock. Feels like I’ve been trapped in a time zone. Touch screens and all of that,” Perez says.
He spent his entire adult life behind bars—13 years. He spent two of them in Rikers and two months there in solitary confinement.
“The only human contact I had was basically when the officer came to my cell and gave me food through the slot on the door. The doctor comes by once a week and talks to me. You know, ‘Do you feel like killing yourself?’” Perez says.
The city says eight inmates at Rikers island did kill themselves between 2007 and 2011 and there were more than 2,500 instances of prisoners harming themselves.
The de Blasio administration says suicide in city jails is below the national average but instances of self harm have increased, so they hope a three-year project studying these “sentinel events” will help.
“Sentinel events is a method which is designed to be non-blaming, so it’s not designed to be an investigation to assign blam. It’s designed to be a way of understanding the multiple causes of serious errors,” says Jim Parson, Vice President and Research Director of Vera Institute of Justice.
There have been serious errors at Rikers recently and consequences. The city Department of Investigation alleges some guards smuggled drugs. Charges have been filed.
Also two supervisors withheld information from a federal probe about violent incidents. One of them, William Clemons, appointed Chief of Department in May, announced his resignation on the same day as the announcement of the study.
“There still abuse going on at Rikers Island. That’s never change,” Perez says.
Former inmate Perez says he’s changed though by studying in jail. Now working for the nonprofit Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project, he’s optimistic the study of jail behavior will make a difference for others.
“I really hope so. I think that we have made some strides,” he says.
A $ 400,000 federal grant funds the study. Work begins next year.
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