NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — New York City will pay up to $53 million to settle a lawsuit on behalf of thousands of pretrial detainees who were wrongfully isolated and held in cramped cells for up to 23 hours per day on Rikers Island and in Manhattan, according to the proposed settlement filed in federal court on Wednesday.
According to the proposed agreement and Board of Correction rules, people accused of breaking specific laws while awaiting trial in city jails are entitled to fair hearings before being relocated from communal areas to restrictive housing, which sometimes includes solitary confinement, the New York Times reported.
Eric Hecker, one of the lawyers who filed the class-action case, said the city's Department of Correction failed to provide those mandatory hearings to about 4,400 detainees between March 2018 and June 2022, denying due process to people who had not been convicted of crimes.
"The department brazenly ignored the Constitution," Hecker told the Times in a statement. "They knew this was highly restrictive housing, and they knew it was illegal, but they kept using it anyway."
Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesperson for the city's Law Department, said that safety at Rikers was one of the city's highest priorities and added that the decision to place some detainees in restrictive housing "reflected these safety concerns."
"The practices that led to this litigation have been modified," Paolucci said in a statement. "This settlement is in the best interests of all parties."
The agreement, the value of which depends on how many wronged detainees claim their share, would reportedly be one of the largest city payouts ever involving the Correction Department.
In November, the city agreed to pay up to $300 million to thousands of jailed people whose releases were delayed for hours or even days after they made bail.
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