QUESTION
How is the NYC Department of Corrections ensuring adequate staffing and adherence to protocols in jails?
3:53:21
·
98 sec
The NYC Department of Corrections conducts thorough investigations after jail deaths, disciplines officers for not conducting meaningful tours, and runs an observation aid program to improve staffing and protocol adherence.
- Thorough investigations follow each death, involving the forensic unit and operations side.
- Officers failing to perform meaningful tours are disciplined, which, along with training, is showing improvements.
- The observation aid program, one of the highest paid work assignments, allows inmates to assist in suicide prevention by serving as additional eyes, enhancing safety on all tours.
Sandy Nurse
3:53:21
I mean, I think I'd be curious to see what those recommend how those recommendations are different from what we've been seeing from reports.
3:53:27
It seems from the the federal monitor It seems that consistently when they look at the deaths and and and the suicides, it was, you know, a lack of people being on their post.
3:53:41
Or doing their tour consistently or not, you know, getting the the next step in the chain to come down or not providing 1st aid in CPR.
3:53:51
So what are you doing to ensure that you have adequate staffing in the housing units, in the jails, and to keep them at their post and making sure that they're doing their tours on time.
James Saunders
3:54:05
So After every death, we conduct a very, very thorough investigation that's conducted by the forensic unit and our operations cut and write the folks on the operations side.
3:54:18
And I can tell you with respect to deaths where they were findings, where the officers were not conducting meaningful tours, they were appropriately disciplined.
3:54:26
And so between the training and the discipline, we are seeing improvements.
3:54:32
We also have a observation aid program in place whereby people in custody have an opportunity to work as a suicide prevention aid, and it's one of the highest paid work assignments in in Department of Corrections.
3:54:46
And so that provides us with an extra set of eyes on all three tours.
3:54:50
Their job is to, again, service that extra set of eyes not to intervene, but to alert the officers who themselves have to conduct meaningful tours.