NEW YORK — Mentally ill detainees on Rikers Island and in other city jails have become more likely to deliberately hurt themselves in recent years, data obtained by the New York Daily News shows.
Incidents of self-harm in better-staffed Rikers Island units for mentally ill detainees made up 65% of all such incidents in the jails in December, the figures show.
In all there were 154 incidents of self-harm in the jails in December, with 100 of them taking place in mental health units on Rikers. The overall number of self harm incidents in December exceeded the 110 incidents reported in January 2022 by 40%.
In June, some 79 of 176 reported self-harm incidents occurred in mental health units — an amount equal to 45% of such incidents.
Meanwhile, data produced by Correction Health Services and the Department of Correction from injury reports shows overall incidents of self-harm in the jails rising since 2019.
In 2022 through August, the average monthly rate of self-harm incidents among all jail detainees was 30.4 per 1,000.
That was up 34% from the monthly self-harm rate in 2020 of 22.7 per 1,000 detainees, and up 6% from the monthly self-harm rate of 28.7 detainees per 1,000 recorded in 2021.
The upward trend occurred even though the city Board of Correction issued an unusual public statement expressing concern in September 2021.
The statement noted there were five suicides between December 2020 and that September had an “alarming” increase in self-harm incidents. There was one additional suicide in October 2020.
And there were six more suicides in 2022.
Topping a list of four jails assessed by the city Board of Correction to have the highest rates of self-harm was Rikers’ West Facility, where detainees are held in “extreme isolation for medical and security reasons.”
West was one of the jails implicated in the Walker v. City of New York class-action lawsuit involving detainees held in excessive isolation that was settled for $53 million last week.
Two other Rikers Island jails — the George R. Vierno Center and Robert N. Davoren Center — have had the highest rates of emergency lock-ins, where detainees are locked in their cells for extended periods. And the Anna M. Kross Center has the most mental health beds.
DOC officials did not reply to requests for comment on the increasing trend.
Close to 45% of the city’s jail population has some kind of diagnosed mental health condition. Extrapolated to the jails’ estimated population of 5,951 detainees on April 1, that means about 2,678 detainees have mental health problems.
But altogether, the jails’ mental health units contain just a few hundred beds.
Julia Solomons, a senior policy social worker with Bronx Defenders, said the mental health units offered by the jail system are “woefully short” of the need.
“Because of that scarcity, only the most actively unwell people are able to be in those units,” she said. “We are working with a population that probably shouldn’t be in a carceral setting at all. But no matter where they are being housed, their needs just aren’t being met.”
———
