Federal prosecutors plan to sue New York over widespread civil rights violations in the handling of adolescent inmates at Rikers Island, making clear their dissatisfaction with the city’s progress in reining in brutality by guards and improving conditions at the jail complex, a new court filing shows.
The decision to take the city to court comes more than four months after the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, issued a blistering report that cited a pervasive and “deep-seated culture of violence” directed at teenage inmates at Rikers. The report found rampant use of excessive force by correction officers, the overuse of solitary confinement and an ineffectual system of investigating assaults by guards.
That report, which followed a 2½-year investigation by Mr. Bharara’s office, proposed more than 10 pages of remedial measures that prosecutors said the city’s Correction Department would have to put in place, and warned that if the city did not work toward that goal, the Justice Department could file a lawsuit and seek court-ordered reforms.
“While the United States had hoped to reach a speedy resolution with the city on these critical issues,” Mr. Bharara said in the filing on Thursday, “thus far insufficient progress has been made.”
In September, Mr. Bharara issued a strongly worded statement after The New York Times reported that city officials had withheld key portions of a report on violence at Rikers from his office during its investigation, and that officials involved in reporting distorted data had been promoted. Mr. Bharara said the revelations did “not instill confidence in us that the city will quickly meet its constitutional obligations.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/nyregion/us-plans-to-sue-new-york-over-rikers-island-conditions.html
