Bloomberg made things worse at notoriously abusive Rikers: "almost medieval levels of violence"

[Cal Carpenter]

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/nyregion/why-violence-toward-inmates-at-rikers-grew.html

Aug. 13, 2014

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The two-and-a-half-year investigation, which focused on the abuse of teenage inmates by correction staff, was exhaustive in cataloging the brutality. But a critical question that went unaddressed is how conditions were allowed to get to this point.

Rikers has been a place of violent excess for decades. And the growing ranks of inmates with mental illnesses, reaching nearly 40 percent of the jail population today, have added to the challenges for correction officials.

But conditions worsened substantially under the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, which reduced jail staff and failed to curb escalating violence by guards, according to former correction officials, inmates’ advocates and others intimately familiar with the jail.

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During Mr. Bloomberg’s last term, use of force by officers on inmates jumped by 90 percent, according to Correction Department data. Inmates’ advocates and public officials charged with overseeing the jails said they pleaded for the administration to address the issue.

“We met with the Department of Correction and the Bloomberg administration about the prevalence of violence directed by correctional staff towards prisoners, and they didn’t respond,” said Dr. Robert Cohen, a member of the New York City Board of Correction, a watchdog agency.

Early on, the Bloomberg administration cut more than 3,000 correctional positions. While some of the cuts were attributable to the declining inmate population and the closing of facilities, Mr. Horn said the reductions eventually went too far. When even more were proposed in 2008, he sent a letter to the city’s budget office, warning that further reductions would be “impossible without compromising the safety of everybody in the jail.”

More at link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/nyregion/why-violence-toward-inmates-at-rikers-grew.html



He is a racist authoritarian and his policies destroyed lives.

[Cal Carpenter]

1. Kick

Shameless, I know.