{"id":352275,"date":"2021-10-17T15:42:50","date_gmt":"2021-10-17T15:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=62228b76cfce302bb6cedd00395b269f"},"modified":"2021-10-17T15:42:50","modified_gmt":"2021-10-17T15:42:50","slug":"rikers-forceful-guard-union-is-deepening-the-jails-humanitarian-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/10\/17\/rikers-forceful-guard-union-is-deepening-the-jails-humanitarian-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Rikers\u2019 Forceful Guard Union Is Deepening the Jail\u2019s Humanitarian Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Advocates<\/a>

Outrage over the human rights abuses at New York City\u2019s Rikers Island penal colony is spreading, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and two other New York-based Congress members speaking out to decry the \u201cinhumane conditions\u201d at the jail after visiting it. Other New York politicians who have spoken out about the abuses at Rikers include Assembly members Jessica Gonz\u00e1lez-Rojas and Emily Gallagher and NYC public advocate Jumaane Williams.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on September 28, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a \u201cdisaster emergency\u201d at Rikers Island. This order did not free anyone, providing instead for electronic court hearings to ease the Department of Corrections (DOC) transport infrastructure. Nonetheless, it represented the latest acknowledgment from politicians of what incarcerated people and their supporters have been saying for months: Conditions at Rikers Island represent a humanitarian disaster.<\/p>\n

These reports depict prisoners packed into filthy and overcrowded intake areas and other makeshift lodging — deprived of bedding, showers and functioning toilets — for days and even weeks on end. Health care is widely unavailable, and at least 12 people have died on Rikers Island this year. At least one prisoner, Robert Jackson, died after being denied<\/a> medical care.<\/p>\n

The cause of death for at least five people was apparent suicide, and federally appointed monitors reported<\/a> that guards continue to fail to undertake basic suicide prevention steps, including intervening in attempts that occur in their line of sight. The monitors also report that there has been a spike in violence committed by guards against prisoners, including the rampant use of head blows and chemical weapons to discipline prisoners. The federally appointed monitors recently characterized the situation<\/a> as \u201cnothing short of an emergency posing an immediate threat\u201d to prisoners and staff alike.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that the island\u2019s network of jails has ever been safe, only that even veteran observers like the Legal Aid Society\u2019s Corey Stoughton argue<\/a> that conditions today represent a crisis unprecedented in recent memory.<\/p>\n

Conditions at Rikers have always been <\/a>symptomatic of New York City\u2019s brutal racialized class structure. Further, many observers are calling attention to the role that judges and prosecutors play<\/a> in fueling the current crisis by remanding many prisoners to city custody.<\/p>\n

But the present crisis has a more immediate cause: Members of the Correction Officers\u2019 Benevolent Association (COBA) — the influential union representing the DOC\u2019s uniformed staff — are engaging in apparent \u201csick-outs\u201d and work stoppages while seeking to secure money for 2,000 new hires of guards at Rikers, pushing to expand the abusive system even as outside observers call for it to be dismantled.<\/p>\n

The number of guards staying away from Rikers reached 2,000 per day<\/a> multiple times this summer, and persists at roughly 35 percent of the workforce<\/a> on a given day.<\/p>\n

The reduced presence of guards at Rikers has likely reduced rates of some forms of violence, given how recalcitrantly brutal<\/a> the DOC workforce has proven to be. Prisoners have stepped up to fill the vacuum<\/a>, affecting basic self-management in instances where guards have simply abandoned their posts for days on end. But in a facility where guards control almost every aspect of daily life, prisoners are not acting under conditions of their own making; they do not have free access to food, water, health care or even bedding. While it is perhaps the intent of the absent guards to demonstrate how \u201cessential\u201d they are to Rikers, what they are proving instead is that nobody should be placed under their \u201ccare, custody, and control\u201d (to invoke the department\u2019s motto) in the first place.<\/p>\n

Mayor Bill de Blasio recently filed suit<\/a> against COBA, holding the union and its president, Benny Boscio Jr., accountable for what the mayor alleges is a coordinated workplace action. These are forbidden for public-sector unions by New York State\u2019s Public Employees\u2019 Fair Employment Act, known commonly as the Taylor Law, and can accrue hefty fines and other penalties. While COBA and the other uniformed unions deny any coordination, they have made it very clear how the city can make the absences stop. As investigative journalist Nick Pinto recently documented,<\/a> union leaders are calling for 2,000 new hires and complaining about forced compliance with the <\/a>Nunez<\/em><\/a> consent decree<\/a>, in which court-appointed monitors regularly inspect Rikers facilities, monitor guards and work, and report on what they find<\/a> in often scathing terms.<\/p>\n

If de Blasio is correct that guards\u2019 mass absenteeism constitutes collective action, COBA follows in the footsteps of the New York City cops\u2019 union, the Patrolmen\u2019s Benevolent Association (PBA), which undertook a work slowdown in response to the 2014 emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Pushing back against the anti-cop zeitgeist that followed the rebellion in Ferguson, Missouri, the PBA appeared to earnestly believe that a police slowdown could create chaos in New York City sufficient to make everyone appreciate the cops again. But major crime complaints actually went down<\/a>. The only thing that suffered was city revenue — from the bullshit tickets that cops write all day, which few people seemed to miss.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the control DOC guards wield over every aspect of prisoners\u2019 lives allows them to let Rikers fall into disarray much more easily than the cops can cause chaos in the streets. They can, in a word, succeed where the cops failed in 2014.<\/p>\n

In response to de Blasio\u2019s suit, COBA issued a belated and lukewarm denunciation of guards\u2019 widespread failure to show up at work. But its members know better than to take union leadership at the word. Over the last five decades, COBA has carved out a powerful niche for itself<\/a> in New York politics, due in large part to workplace militancy aimed at improving wages and benefits, growing the union\u2019s ranks and combating civilian oversight of how guards do their jobs. This power has not always existed.<\/p>\n

COBA was founded in 1901, when Rikers Island was a far-flung corner<\/a> of the DOC system. The union\u2019s history<\/a> is illustrative of the rise of Rikers, and New York City\u2019s guards, to prominence in city politics. While New York City municipal unions were not legally recognized until the 1950s, \u201cbenevolent associations\u201d provided avenues for municipal workers to pool their money to cover hardships like burial expenses of members, and served as increasingly powerful lobbying bodies capable of enlisting politicians to defend their interests in city government.<\/p>\n

City unions became increasingly independent after Mayor Robert Wagner\u2019s 1954 recognition of their legitimacy, legally codified in the 1967 Taylor Law. This period saw the rise of unions — such as the United Federation of Teachers and the PBA — as not only lobbyists but political actors in their own right. This political power was backed by the threat of strike action which, though illegal, was anything but rare. While notable strikes of this era included sanitation workers and teachers, COBA followed more closely in the footsteps of the PBA, which undertook ticketing slowdowns (similar to that of 2014<\/a>) and other public-facing activism, most spectacularly in the 1966 electoral defeat of a restructured Civilian Complaint Review Board. <\/p>\n

COBA\u2019s inauguration into labor militancy came in 1970 under the leadership of Leo Zeferetti, as guards undertook work slowdowns and sickouts to demand more hires. Though Mayor John Lindsay threatened legal action, as de Blasio did recently, Lindsay ultimately capitulated and hired 300 new guards. When rebellious prisoners took over Manhattan\u2019s Tombs jail that same year, guards threatened to quit en masse unless they were allowed to deploy more force against rebellious prisoners.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, when rebellion erupted in five facilities across the city<\/a>, Lindsay allowed for considerable brutality by guards, who faced virtually no repercussions for crushing the rebellions with disproportionate violence<\/a>. This included systematically beating Long Island prisoners, after they had surrendered, in full view of City Hall and DOC officials. Simultaneously, COBA agitated against the civilian watchdog Board of Correction and sought to neutralize its power.<\/p>\n