NEEDS CORRECTION
Inmate attacks on city jailers soaring
While the city lets jailbirds play video games and have pizza parties amid softer disciplinary rules, New York’s Boldest are increasingly brutalized, workers-comp stats show.
Workers-compensation claims filed by correction officers and other Correction Department employees injured on the job surged 24 percent to 5,007 in 2017, costing the city $5.3 million in medical expenses and lost wages, according to Law Department records. The city spent $4.4 million in 2016 on 4,026 claims.
The Correction Department said 2,086 of last year’s claims were due to inmate-related incidents — up from 1,947 in 2016 and 1,263 in 2015. The ranks of Correction Department employees grew during the same period by 2,000.
But labor leaders said workers-comp claims continue to rise because “assaults against correction officers have skyrocketed. They have gone up every single year.”
On July 13, a prisoner slashed a correction officer across the face after a battle on Rikers Island involving up to a dozen inmates — the latest in a series of attacks on guards.
The spike in guard assaults came even as the inmate population shrinks and the de Blasio administration’s jail budget soars.
The correction-officers union blamed the mayor for placing a ban on solitary confinement for inmates under 21.
“Taking that away from us was like taking a gun from a police officer and putting him in a crime-infested neighborhood,” Correction Officers Benevolent Associ- ation President Elias Husamudeen told The Post.
“Unfortunately the mayor seems to think crimes committed in jail should be treated differently than on the streets.”
Husamudeen claimed the inmates feel “emboldened” to fight officers because “they know about the mayor’s new policies.”
The kinder climate includes pizza parties and video games as incentives for good behavior.
Husamudeen said policy changes have left officers with little recourse. Even if an inmate is arrested for assaulting an officer, Husamudeen said, “he will still get commissary and can eat potato chips and Doritos, he will still be able to get rec- reation, watch TV, still be able to use the phone.”
As the de Blasio administration begins dismantling Rikers and shipping prisoners off to smaller jails across the city, the city poured $1.36 billion into its jails last year, a $70 million increase as the daily inmate population fell to a 34-year low of 9,500, city Comptroller Scott Stringer said.
Correction Department spokesman Peter Thorne said there are more inmaterelated workers-comp claims because there are more workers.
“This increase in claims and payments reflects higher staffing levels, higher wages and our strengthened emphasis on timely and proper claim reporting,” he said.