NEW YORK (AP) – New York City’s Rikers Island jail has entrenched problems dealing with sexual abuse, including emergency hotlines that don’t work, confidential complaints read by fellow inmates and investigations that don’t interview alleged attackers, according to an internal review obtained by The Associated Press.
The report, conducted last year by an outside consultant, also revealed that guards dangerously underestimated the problem, felt helpless to do anything about it and showed “poor professional boundaries” themselves by inappropriately hugging and kissing one another and hanging racy postings in common areas.
The findings come as overseers of the city’s 10,000-inmate jail system moved last week to write new city rules spelling out a zero-tolerance sexual assault policy in line with the 2003 federal Prison Rape Elimination Act.
At the time of the report, its authors noted, few staff or inmates had heard of the federal law, and education addressing its requirements “did not appear to be occurring.”
City Correction Department spokeswoman Eve Kessler said the report was a “wake-up call, and we heard it loud and clear.”