JAIL CALLS WENT STRAIGHT TO DA’S
PRIVACY SCREWUP LASTED A YEAR
A massive gaffe that led to the wrongful recording of hundreds of confidential jailhouse calls between city inmates and their legal advisers spread well beyond the Bronx and Brooklyn — and dates back for at least a year, the Daily News has learned.
The recordings wound up in the hands of district attorneys in all five boroughs, a stunning mistake that could affect hundreds of court cases citywide.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office alerted staffers on Friday that they were in possession of attorney-client recordings after the jail phone system, managed by the city-contracted prison communications firm Securus Technologies Inc., mistakenly recorded calls between defendants and their lawyers, as first reported by The News.
“We were informed today by the Department of Correction that, beginning last March, their outside vendor for inmate calls failed to accurately record attorney ‘donot-record’ requests. As a result, a number of attorney-client inmate calls were recorded and then inadvertently produced to the five DA’s Offices in response to subpoenas,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Nitin Savur wrote in an office-wide email shared with The News, noting that an audit was underway to determine the scope of the breach.
“As you are aware, we cannot listen to any privileged communications between a defendant and his or her counsel,” read the email, which also instructed staffers to alert higherups should they come across a wrongful recording of a jailhouse call.
Securus mistakenly recorded 118 legal calls with 29 inmates facing charges in the Bronx and another 1,450 legal calls involving 353 inmates’ cases in Brooklyn — data detailed in two audits conducted by Securus at the behest of the city’s Department of Correction.
Yet the audits only focused on defendants facing charges in the Bronx and Brooklyn, and not those in Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island, and therefore might not have captured the full extent of the screwup.
“[We] demand a full account as to how this was allowed to occur so that we can fully understand and assess the breadth and depth of this breach, how many of our clients cases were implicated, how this information was used, and whether these violations were of such a prejudicial nature that dismissal of the cases is warranted,” the Brooklyn
Defender Services, the Bronx Defenders, the Legal Aid Society, Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, New York County Defender Services and Queens Defenders said in a joint statement to The News.
“We urge the New York City Department of Correction and Securus to immediately ensure that no privileged calls are recorded ever again,” the statement continued. “We call on the district attorneys to denounce this practice, and to immediately disclose and sequester any attorney-client recordings in their possession, without listening to them first.”
A spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office on Sunday said prosecutors first flagged the issue last year when they noticed they had recordings of lawyer-client calls. “It was our office that alerted the defense of the issue when we discovered that we were inadvertently in possession of privileged calls,” the spokeswoman said. “Since then, we are making every effort to determine what calls were provided to us, what calls were listened to by our staff by mistake and whether hearing these calls affected any cases.”
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office has also directed staffers not to play any wrongful recordings that they might come across.
“We have previously taken steps to mitigate such issues by providing our [assistant district attorneys] a list of impacted phone numbers and instructing them not to listen to any calls in question between attorneys and their clients,” the spokesman said. “We have now reissued that guidance and are taking all necessary steps to protect the rights of defendants.”
City Hall did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding whether it would renew its contract with Securus, which is set to expire on March 31. But one City Hall insider told The News the city is planning to sign another contract with the firm while officials consider other potential vendors to handle the jail phone system.
Securus did not respond to requests for comment on whether it has conducted similar audits for calls in Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island.
The news comes ahead of a City Council hearing on the Correction Department budget, where Council members are expected to address the wrongfully recorded jail calls as well as the accidental release of two inmates — one charged with murder and the other charged with attempted murder — and the recent deaths of two other inmates.