Zachary Katznelson criticizes deadlocking response and reentry coordination

Good afternoon, Chair.

I'm Zachary Ketz-Nelson with the Independent Rikers Commission.

Thanks for holding this hearing.

I want to echo the budget concerns that Darren raised and support those.

And just talk about a couple things that came up in the hearing.

Deadlocking.

Disappointed to hear from the Department of Correction.

It sounded like the only thing they changed when deadlocking came to light was to tell people to stop.

It's the same type of supervision they had before.

There's no new training.

There's no new inspections.

Nothing has changed except don't do it.

And what has happened over the last several years is that training that staff did receive, crisis intervention training, which was a national model where correction staff and health care staff trained together, then worked as teams in those units.

That has completely fallen apart.

It fell apart during COVID.

It has been brought back in a watered-down, halfway form.

Correction Department and CHS don't train together anymore.

They train completely separately.

And we see the results.

As you alluded, staff feel like they don't have a choice but to resort because they don't know what else to do but deadlock people.

And that is utterly wrong to them and particularly to the people that are being deadlocked.

That has to change.

In terms of people getting out, I just want to mention a couple things.

One is that, as you know well, over 1,000 people a year get approved for supportive housing at Rikers, right?

Almost all of them end up in the streets or in the shelters.

There are systems.

We have emergency transitional housing.

People could be in there if they're not getting directly into supportive housing.

But it's falling apart, and it's falling apart in large part because there is no city agency that's active.

actually in charge of making sure that people get what they need.

As in, CHS does its part, then they hand it off to DOHMH, and HRA is involved, and DSS, and all these different entities, but nobody is overarching, nobody is looking over this whole thing and saying, is this actually working, are we getting people connected with the care?

Providers don't know that people are getting out.

They're not told they're being released.

They don't meet people before they come out, which is a huge factor in success, people actually using the services.

There are lots of things we know we could do, and I really hope that when the administration releases its plan to close Rikers, that they're going to address these types of real bureaucratic failures that are preventing people from getting care.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you to the panel.

Next, we'll hear from Giselle Castro with Exalt Youth, Tarini Garamella, Osborne Association, Nadia Chite with Cases,

Miriam Goodman with Women's Prison Association.

I'm also going to add Jeanette Bacanegra with Justice for Families, LTD.