WHY SEGREGATING VIOLENT OFFENDERS MAKES OUR JAILS SAFER FOR EVERYONE

The vicious ambush of Correction O�cer Jean Sou�rant inside the George Motchan Detention Center on Rikers Island, which left his neck fractured and bleeding on his brain, should send a chill down the spine of every New Yorker.

O�cer Sou�rant, a Haitian immigrant who now calls Brooklyn home, was on duty protecting and serving our city from some of its most dangerous criminals, including some of its most violent. The men who attacked him, including one who boasted during a taped conversation that he planned to “knock out this super cop,” were gang members awaiting trial on violent crimes.

This is not an isolated incident. There is a culture of violence inside New York City’s correctional facilities, and our correction o�cers lack the basic resources to rein in that violence. More than 700 inmates have been slashed or stabbed over the last two years following the restrictions that were placed on the use of punitive segregation. Simply put, punitive segregation is a jail within a jail. It is a public safety imperative that punitive segregation be permitted as a disciplinary tool for repeatedly violent inmates who put correction o�cers and other inmates in harm’s way, regardless of their age.

Consider the common knowledge that the majority of violence in our jails is committed by violent inmates who are 21 and under, as well as the federal data on violent crime arrests that consistently shows thze peak age over time to be between 18 and 21 years old.

Just as Raise the Age legislation achieved on the state level last year carved out violent o�enders, smart criminal justice policy balances both justice and safety. This same approach should be taken to the application of punitive segregation, which separates violent inmates from the general population and takes away their ability to commit assaults.

Rather than completely removing it from the disciplinary toolkit, this punishment should be judiciously applied with oversight that takes mental health imperatives and violent behavior into account.

In the absence of punitive segregation, repeat violent youth o�enders avoid any meaningful accountability for slashings or stabbings; after a trip to court, they go back to the facility and get their iPad, $25 stipend, and a bump up in their street gang credentials. That’s not just, nor is it safe. We must combat gangs on our cell blocks with the same fervor as we combat gangs on our city blocks.

If a police o�cer were ambushed on one of our streets the way O�cer Sou�rant was, or for that matter one of the more than 2,000 members of New York’s Boldest who has been assaulted in our jails since 2014, the public response would have been di�erent.

Law enforcement is law enforcement, and our correction o�cers are in equal need of protection. We have to make jails safer for them, as well as for non-violent inmates who are serving their time without incident.

The ongoing debate over closing Rikers Island should not ignore the urgent need to make the city’s jails safer for everyone immediately.

Violent jail culture can and will easily travel to borough-based facilities in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens if we do not proactively change it. We cannot and will not accept an either-or proposition between justice and safety. In the nation’s second-largest jail system, we must have both!

Elias HusamudeenPresident, Correction O�cers’

Benevolent Association

Eric AdamsBrooklyn Borough President