Rikers Island Detainees Wait in “Black Hole” for Competency Treatment
The number of detainees waiting for competency treatment at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex jumped from 100 in 2024 to 127 by February 2025. The average length of stay has also risen, from 70 to 80 days, because the state’s four psychiatric hospitals are full.
While they wait, the detainees cannot be forced to take medication, leaving some too confused to abide by strict rules, such as which side of a hallway they must use. So many end up in Enhanced Supervision Housing—the alternative to solitary confinement in the New York City Department of Correction (DOC).
“Our clients are basically in a black hole,” said Elena Landriscina, a public defender with the Legal Aid Society. “It’s really a horrifying situation to be representing these clients and know the danger that they are in.”
When a competency evaluation is ordered (known as a 730 exam for the section of the criminal code that authorizes it), the average wait for most City detainees is four months. Those found unfit to stand trial must then wait some more for a bed in a state psychiatric facility. But as of early 2025, all 744 beds were full.
Worse, some detainees have had their competency restored in a psychiatric hospital only to decompensate when they returned to Rikers Island to await trial and went off their medication again—initiating another wait for another 730 exam, followed by still another wait for yet another psych bed. When the New York Times caught up with him in 2023, detainee Bernard Derr had been held in this legal limbo for 15 years.
The number of detainees at the jail complex has been rising since a pandemic bust took Rikers Island’s population down to 4,000, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2022, p.1.] By March 20, 2025, the number was above 7,000. The share with a serious mental illness has also climbed, from 16% in 2022 to 21% in 2024, DOC data revealed.
“The raw numbers have absolutely gone up,” said Zachary Katznelson, executive director of the Independent Rikers Commission. “Three years ago or so, they’re probably just over 800 people with a serious mental illness in jail, and now we’re at 1,400.”
A pilot program started in Queens in 2018 by then-Mayor Bill DeBlasio (D) cut the wait time for a 730 exam down to two weeks. But the program was never expanded to other City boroughs under his successor, Mayor Eric Adams (D). Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) added just 25 beds to the state’s capacity in 2024; her current budget proposal includes 100 more, but state lawmakers have not passed that. Importantly, none of the new beds added or proposed is in a maximum-security facility.
Some judges have issued 730 orders with time limits for placing detainees in a psychiatric facility. But Brooklyn Judge Matthew D’Emic admitted that is “more of a suggestion than a direction,” because “you can’t hold somebody in contempt if they don’t have any place to put them.” Then again, the judge added, “One hundred and twenty seven is not a huge number when you talk about the City of New York. I think this is a very solvable problem.”
Sources: The City, New York Times
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