More than a quarter of people locked up in city jails are not getting to court on time for their hearings and trials, according to a Gothamist review. It’s the highest rate of failure since records became publicly available in 1999.
Those transportation delays lead to postponed court hearings and trials, defense attorneys say, and slowdowns in an already overburdened judicial system, forcing people to spend weeks and months longer than necessary in dangerous facilities at Rikers Island.
The city statistics showing delays in transporting detainees can indicate anything from late arrivals to no-shows. Rikers Island’s primary purpose is to hold people in order to ensure they show up to their court dates; most people incarcerated there have been charged with crimes and not convicted.
Arriving late can delay court appearances, thus extending people’s time at the jail. It can stress detainees, trigger violence and exacerbate detainees’ mental health struggles. City jails had the highest death rate last year in a quarter-century.
According to the most recent Mayor’s Management Report, just 72.2% of those detained from September through December last year were brought to court on time. In the prior fiscal year, it was 79.1%, which was the lowest annual rate since at least before 1999. In years prior, this wasn’t a problem: As recently as the 2021 fiscal year, the percentage of detainees brought to court on time was 94.6%, and every year from 1999 to 2012 it was higher than 95%.
Detainees are typically woken up around 4 a.m. to be handcuffed, shackled and transported by bus from the island in the East River to one of the borough courthouses where their cases are heard. Detainees have about 12,000 court appearances each month, according to Department of Correction data.
Spokespeople for the Department of Correction did not respond to two inquiries about why transportation to courts is failing.
A spokesperson for the Office of Court Administration, Lucian Chalfan, said in an email: “We are in constant communication with the Department of Correction to improve on-time prisoner production. Their custody management people are working diligently to improve the percentage of detainees arriving on time for their court appearances. It remains a work in progress.”
It is unclear why detainees are arriving at court late, though former correction officials and attorneys said staffing — and staff management — could be the issue.
When a client is not escorted to the courtroom by correction officers, the explanation is sometimes that there aren’t enough officers available. Other times the reason is that there’s “no movement” at the jail — meaning there’s a lockdown, likely due to a violent incident.
In recent years, the Department of Correction has struggled with staffing, though the number of officers coming to work has improved over the past year. In December, a daily average of 10.3% of staffers were out sick, and 6.6% were on medically restricted duty that limited their interactions with detainees, according to the Department of Correction. Still, there are more uniformed officers than detainees in city jails.
Another possible contributor to the problems in transporting people: A higher percentage of detainees are being transported via bus, because there are no longer jails in walking distance to the courthouses in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where people on trial or awaiting hearings were sometimes held. Those facilities were recently dismantled.
Delayed cases inevitably lead to detainee population increases, and that poses complications to the planned closing of Rikers Island. The current plan is to shutter the dilapidated and dangerous Rikers Island jails and replace them with four facilities elsewhere in the city. But to do that, the detainee population must be 3,300; it is now close to 6,000 and growing.
Joshua White, an attorney with New York County Defender Services, said one of his clients, charged with forcible touching, was not brought to court for four hearings to have his bail reduced or removed, leading the man to languish at Rikers. Each time, White received no explanation, and the judge refused to reconsider bail without his client present. When the man finally had his hearing, bail was removed and he was freed.
Even when detainees are woken up before daybreak and taken to one of the borough courthouses, they don’t always make it to their trials or hearings, White said. That’s because they may be stuck waiting in a group holding cell at the courthouse and not transported to the single-room cell next to the courtroom. "My clients are in the court building, but it's going to take several hours for them to be brought [to court],” he said.
At times, White said, court officials may pressure him to waive a client’s appearance if the person is not in court. “Why would I waive my client's appearance?” he asked. “We'd just throw our client's constitutional rights away just for this court’s convenience."
Some non-appearances at court come with simple explanations. Correction officers may tell attorneys that detainees refused to go to court or that they were too sick to be taken, lawyers said.
