JAILS
Plan to Move Trans Rikers Detainees Draws Concern
Attorneys warn of potential disruption in services at state-run facilities
BY MATT TRACY
Local leaders and attorneys
representing trans clients
are expressing reservations
in response to a plan
to transfer hundreds of people — including
cisgender and transgender
women, as well as trans men and
non-binary individuals — from Rikers
to state-run facilities upstate.
The plan was unveiled in a joint
announcement between the de Blasio
and Hochul administrations on
October 13, but attorney Deborah
Lolai, who heads up the LGBTQ Defense
Project at Bronx Defenders and
serves on a city task force to address
problems facing transgender, gender
non-conforming, non-binary, and intersex
people in city custody, said the
announcement came out of the blue
and raised questions about the status
of health services, attorney visitation
rights, and other needs for detainees
— even as government offi cials say
services will continue upstate.
“Everyone on the task force except
for those at the Department of
Correction (DOC) were completely
blindsided by this,” said Lolai, who
represents trans clients at Rikers.
Lolai spoke to Gay City News October
15 from the parking lot at
the Rose M. Singer Center (RMSC),
which houses the soon-to-betransferred
individuals.
The Hochul administration insisted
on October 13 that the “temporary
transfer will help ease staffing
concerns, capacity constraints,
and improve safety for many until
the city can implement a permanent
solution” at the notorious Rikers
jail complex. The state intends
to move 230 people from the Rose
M. Singer Center to the Bedford
Hills Correctional Facility and the
Taconic Correctional Facility beginning
on October 18. Detainees will
be transferred twice per week, with
10 to 20 people moving at a given
time. Those who have pending immigration
cases will not be moved.
A Hochul administration spokesperson
clarifi ed to Gay City News
that the individuals who will be
transferred includes trans women,
trans men, and individuals identifying
Hundreds of detainees are being moved from Rikers to facilities upstate.
as gender non-conforming
or non-binary. Lolai, however, said
numerous transgender women continue
to be housed in the men’s jail
at Rikers, which will not be included
in the forthcoming transfers.
“While the conditions at Rikers
Island are human rights violations,
the worst of it — the facilities that
have been getting the media’s attention
because of their inhumane conditions
— are the men’s facilities, not
the women’s jail, RMSC,” Lolai said.
Hochul’s offi ce said 143 men incarcerated
at Rikers have already been
transferred to state facilities.
The plan follows numerous reports
of disastrous conditions at Rikers,
where a dozen detainees have
died so far this year — including an
out gay man, Esias “Izzy” Johnson,
whose family told Gay City News he
was screaming out for medical attention
in the time leading up to his
death last month. One of the most
high-profi le deaths at Rikers came
in 2019 when Layleen Polanco, an
Afro-Latinx transgender woman,
died in her restrictive housing cell
of seizures caused by epilepsy. Polanco’s
case led to more than a dozen
suspensions and a $5.9 million
settlement. The DOC has also suspended
multiple offi cers in response
to Johnson’s death while that case
continues to be investigated.
Elisa Crespo, the executive director
of the New Pride Agenda, a
statewide LGBTQ advocacy group,
REUTERS/SHANNON STAPLETON
said she does not see how the
transfers will translate into positive
change.
“We understand the governor is
trying to do all she can to deal with
the crisis at Rikers, but moving folks
from one jail to another just doesn’t
seem like a solution,” Crespo told
Gay City News. “The goal is decarceration.
Folks who are in pre-trial
detention should be released while
they go through the courts. Moreover,
we’re very concerned about
the lack of trans-inclusive jail policies
in state facilities.”
Several out LGBTQ elected offi -
cials have visited the Rikers jail as
of late, including Bronx Congressmember
Ritchie Torres, who toured
the jail on October 12 with fellow
New York Congressmembers Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez and Carolyn
Maloney. Torres is welcoming the
plan to transfer detainees upstate.
“Thank you @GovKathyHochul
for partnering with @NYCMayor in
responsibly reducing the population
at Rikers Island and alleviating the
staffi ng crisis that has taken hold
there,” Torres wrote on Twitter after
Hochul’s announcement. “Progress.”
Assemblymember Jessica
González-Rojas of Queens has
also visited Rikers, where she said
a man living with HIV was not receiving
his medication and a trans
woman was not being housed in accordance
with her gender identity.
“I appreciate that Governor
Hochul recognizes Rikers Island is
a death trap for women and trans
people,” González-Rojas said in a
written statement to Gay City News
following Hochul’s announcement.
“She’s certainly being creative in
the face of inaction by judges and
our district attorney in Queens. At
the same time, temporary fi xes are
not decarceration. We have done
the tweaks and they don’t work.”
González-Rojas is urging her
colleagues in the State Legislature
to pass a series of bills aimed at
alleviating conditions for incarcerated
individuals, including Elder
Parole, Fair and Timely Parole, and
the Clean Slate Act, which would
seal criminal records. She is also
calling on district attorneys in the
city to stop asking for cash bail,
which, she says, “only criminalizes
people in poverty.”
Several members of the task force
subsequently issued an October 18
letter to top elected offi cials, including
the governor, attorney general,
and mayor, demanding that the
plan be placed on hold. They are
also asking the governor and mayor’s
teams consult with those who
are directly impacted by the plan.
And yet, even as conditions at
Rikers appear to have hit rock
bottom, Lolai said the transfers
are moving ahead at a time when
the DOC is just starting to make
progress in its treatment of queer
detainees under the director of
LGBTQ initiatives, Elizabeth Munsky,
who entered that role in 2019.
Munsky has overseen an expansion
of programming for detainees
and the DOC has added a handful
of LGBTQ coordinators to meet
with trans detainees more consistently,
Lolai said. She cannot say
the same thing about state prisons,
which she said are not designed to
take people who are in jail pre-trial
while they fi ght their cases.
“I can go into the Department of
Correction and visit clients most hours
of the day,” Lolai said. “At state prison,
I would only get one 30-minute phone
call with my clients per month.”
Other attorneys representing
➤ RIKERS, continued on p.5
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