Inmate abuse has finally been acknowledged by New York State, now that a former inmate of Arthur Kill Correctional Facility (now closed) has been granted a $300,000 settlement for a case against one of the guards at the prison.
The inmate said the guard had squeezed his testicles so hard that he defecated on himself.
The accused guard has had numerous of other cases of abuse brought by inmates, according to a transcript.
Unfortunately, the complaints were handwritten so they ended up “buried in the prison’s filing system.” In other words, they were forgotten about.
The union that represented the guards had declined to comment about the situation.
A spokesman for the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision declined to explain how the agency had handled internal grievances in the past. However, it was said that it had supposedly begun allowing inmates to make complaints on the computer system against staff members. That project will be completed in 2016, the spokesman said.
Judge John Gleeson of the Eastern District of New York noticed that there have been numerous red flags against the guard during his employment, but no action has been taken against him for these previous offenses.
Lawyers and prison rights advocates had complained about the issue of guards mistreating inmates for a very long time.
“I’ve never understood why these cases don’t lead to people losing their positions,” said Anthony Cecitti, a lawyer who has represented several inmates in brutality cases.
According to The Times and The Marshall Project, the state of New York has paid out at least 8.8 million in settlements or jury awards in guard abuse/excessive force cases.
Ironically enough, among the 207 cases of inmate abuse, names of officers and prisons have been repeated in multiple cases, including the accused guard.
“If you are serious about identifying bad actors, then you should not only be tracking the grievances, you should also be tracking the cases that have been filed against them, substantiated or not.” said Karen L. Murtagh, executive director of the prisoners Legal Service of New York, non-profit.
State officials say that they are currently proceeding to look into 4,000 open investigations into grievances filed by prisoners in the New York State system.
Each year, New York State inmates file hundreds of lawsuits against guards and/or correction officers. Most are dismissed in court.
Featured image by Kate Ter Haar via Flickr, available under a Creative Commons license.
