Two new lawsuits, filed by the relatives of deceased Rikers inmates, point to more atrocious conduct by employees of Corizon Health Services, Inc. Yet, despite their growing rap sheet, few have spoken out to demand the DOC end its contract with the troubled for-profit health care contractor.

Rikers has come under increased scrutiny since July, when the New York Times covered the violent conditions facing mentally ill inmates who are routinely brutalized by guards and neglected by Corizon’s medical personnel. The US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York also released a report detailing staggering violence by prison staff against juvenile inmates. The Department of Labor fined Corizon $71,000 for failing to protect employees from workplace violence, too.

Around that time, the family of 19-year old Rikers inmate, Andy Henriquez, sued Corizon after he died a slow and agonizing death in an isolation unit from a tear in his aorta. According to the lawsuit, when a doctor finally came to his cell just before his death, he gave Henriquez a prescription for hand cream under the wrong name.

On both sides of the prison walls, Rikers inmates’ calls for help have been met with a resounding and deadly silence. Aside from a weak bill that increases oversight for solitary while doing little-to-nothing to curb its use, there hasn’t been a single, consequential policy change on the island, or much of an effort to hold the DOC accountable for the deplorable conditions they’ve harbored there for so many years. There have been virtually no consequences for the corrections officers who routinely beat juvenile and mentally ill inmates, and no reassessment of its medical programs after Corizon employees repeatedly endangered — and in some cases, killed — the prisoners it was hired to help.

If lawmakers and the public need more disturbing, gruesome stories to understand the need for change, they should read the lawsuits filed on behalf of inmates Bradley Ballard and Carlos Mercado. Continue reading →