The state consistently violates judicial orders by leaving detainees in need of psychiatric treatment ahead of their trial behind bars for months at a time, a new lawsuit alleges.
The class action lawsuit brought by the Legal Aid Society and the NYU School of Law’s Civil Rights in the Criminal Legal System Clinic claims that the New York State Office of Mental Health, the city’s Health + Hospitals Corporation and the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene regularly violate detainees’ due process rights by failing to move them from Rikers Island to a psychiatric facility when ordered to do so by a judge.
Last year, 130 New Yorkers waited more than 100 days on Rikers Island before being moved to a state facility for “competency restoration,” the term for the type of treatment given to defendants found mentally unfit to stand trial…