NYC to Pay Up to $53 Million to Detainees Who Were Wrongfully Held in Solitary Confinement

New York City has agreed to pay as much as $53 million to settle a lawsuit on behalf of thousands of pretrial detainees on Rikers Island and in Manhattan who were wrongfully isolated and held in small cells for up to 23 hours per day, according to documents filed Wednesday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

People who are accused of breaking certain rules while awaiting trial in city jails are entitled to fair hearings before they are transferred from communal areas to restrictive housing, which sometimes includes solitary confinement, according to the settlement and Board of Correction rules.

The city Correction Department did not grant 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, according to Eric Hecker, one of the lawyers who filed the class-action lawsuit.

Read the source article at nytimes.com