New Rikers holding area devil’s island

Rikers Island’s intake center is overrun with detainees packed in small, fetid pens for days on end with little supervision, as was its previous admissions facility that was closed only nine months ago for the same violations, the Board of Correction revealed Tuesday.

The Eric M. Taylor Center, where most new admissions are now processed and quarantined before they are assigned to a housing area, has become overrun with detainees in violation of city regulations, according to jailhouse sources and a board member who recently visited the facility.

“The admission area, the intake facility, the receiving room was packed with screaming people . . . Some had been there for days,” board member Bobby Cohen said during a public meeting Tuesday.

“There were 100-plus people crowded into pens without basic, basic services. Filthy pens without capacity to urinate in a urinal.”

Cohen said the sheer “volume” of people denied access to medication, clothes, bathrooms, phone calls and transportation to their court dates was overwhelming.

The conditions are strikingly similar to those seen last year in the Otis Bantum Correctional Center’s intake area, where detainees languished for days on end with little access to food, water, bathrooms and other basic services before it was shut down in September.

Since the EMTC opened, conditions have deteriorated there as well, as the facility reels from a lack of staff and a population that’s increased 22% since March.

Incidents of uniformed staff using force against detainees have been higher at the facility than the department-wide average for each month of the year so far, according to board member Freya Rigterink.

Year-to-date, such incidents are up about 6%, DOC Commissioner Louis Molina acknowledged.

The average rate of slashings and stabbings is also higher at the EMTC than the department-wide rate so far this year, and in three incidents in May, detainees were injured so badly in unsupervised housing areas, they were sent to a

hospital, Rigterink said.