New York:
More than 90 percent of New York City jail inmates in solitary confinement aren't getting their legally mandated one hour of daily recreation time outside their cells, according to a report released on Wednesday by the city agency that oversees the nation's second-largest jail system.
Many inmates sent to solitary confinement at Rikers Island jail for violating rules go multiple days in a row locked in their cells without access to outdoor recreation cages, the New York City Board of Correction found.
"This hour of recreation is not a mere pleasure for prisoners," the board wrote. "For individuals who are otherwise confined alone in small, spare cells, this hour of fresh air and sunlight and exposure to other people is essential for their mental and physical health and essential to promoting safety."
The study comes as the board writes new minimum standards to be released in November that will change when and how solitary is used, especially for mentally ill and adolescent inmates.
Each day, about 600 inmates of the roughly 11,500 that make up the jail system are placed in punitive segregation, a 23-hour lock-in that government lawyers said was essentially the same as solitary confinement.
The oversight board found that access to recreation time, which inmates aren't required to go to, is elusive because guards assigned to escorting inmates frequently fail to notify prisoners in the morning to sign up.
There are also too few recreation guards, and the 32 outdoor cages are empty, devoid of even metal bars that could be used for pull-ups, the report found.
A spokesman for the head of the correction officers' union didn't respond to a request for comment.
A Department of Correction spokesman said Commissioner Joseph Ponte was aware that access to recreation is a problem and said the commissioner, as part of an agenda to reduce violence, had "already begun reviewing plans to improve the provision of recreational services to inmates."
Ponte, who was appointed in March, has vowed to turn around what he has described as a deeply troubled jail system.
The report was based on a survey of inmates in Rikers' largest solitary unit over five months in 2013 as well as a review of 14 randomly selected days of recreation time detailed in logbooks.