The city Department of Correction failed to get inmates to needed mental health appointments close to 40,000 times over the past four months, according to records released by the system’s oversight board.
The problem is primarily due to a lack of officer escorts and frequent lockdowns to stifle the mayhem, Board of Correction records show.
“It’s a very serious problem,” said Board of Correction member Dr. Robert Cohen. “And what’s created it is not a lack of medical health staff, but a failure of the Department of Correction to escort people to appointments.”
The records suggest that inmates with mental health problems are going without medications, counseling and other treatments.
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And the problem is getting worse.
There were 9,127 missed appointments in April; 9,524 in May, 10,325 in June and 10,770 in July, according to the Board of Correction, which just began compiling the figures.
Inmates are constantly missing doctor appointments in Bellevue Hospital as well, sources say.
Only 30% of people are getting to their appointments at the city- run hospital because buses rarely leave Rikers Island and other city jails on time, according to a jail insider.
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The de Blasio administration has taken steps to improve care for inmates confronting mental illness. It has earmarked close to $33 million for new intensive-care mental health units placed.
The city also moved medical care from the for-profit Corizon to the city’s Health + Hospitals in January.
“The administration has taken numerous aggressive steps to improve mental health services for inmates,” said H + H spokesman Levi Fishman.
The missed appointments arise for a range of reasons — from conflicting attorney visits, alarms that restrict movement, and outright refusal by the inmate. But the main cause is a lack of a security escort, the records show.
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For years, inmates were allowed to walk to the clinic alone, but those charged with violent crimes must now be escorted. Officers, though, are often busy and unable to peel off, records show.
“The Department of Correction does not always have appropriate staffing levels and supervision of escort staff,” said Mary Beth Anderson, director of the Mental Health Project of the Urban Justice Center.
Further compounding the problem, the officers available are often unable to take more than one inmate at a time due to the detainees’ conflicting gang affiliations, a medical staffer said.
“It takes twice as long for them to be seen because they can’t be mixed,” the jail insider said. “It’s especially bad in the adolescent jail.”
The number of jail lockdowns has also gone up this summer due to a spike in violence at the facility housing many younger inmates, according to Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte.
The number of alarms issued during bruising battles among inmates rose from an average of five to six a day, to 26 or more each day at the George Motchan Detention Center on Rikers Island in June, Ponte said.
In at least one case the delay led to a fatal consequence.
In January, inmate Angel Perez-Rios, 44, was found hanged from a cell window by a noose made of shoelaces inside the Anna M. Kross Center. He died several days later.
In jail, Perez-Rios had begged for stronger anti-depressants, according to sources. But three separate medical appointments were canceled because no one could escort him, the case file shows.
It remains unclear why no officer was available to take him to those scheduled appointments.
The city has hired close to 2,000 new correction officers over the past two years and overtime in the department continues to skyrocket.
“There’s no reason for there to be no one to bring them,” said City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, the chair of the Fire and Criminal Justice Committee.
Critics of the department said the high number of missed medical appointments was just one more reason the scandal-scarred facilities on Rikers Island needs to be closed and replaced with smaller borough jails.
“This scandal is another example of why Rikers Island is beyond reform and needs to be shut down,” said Janos Marton, director of policy and campaigns for the advocacy group JustLeadershipUSA.
“For too long we’ve warehoused people with mental health issues and substance abuse issues in our jails.”
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Article source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/rikers-inmates-health-checkups-cops-article-1.2755635