Officials in New York City have tentatively agreed to reforms for troubled Rikers Island, including appointing a federal monitor to oversee the jail complex, installing 8,000 new surveillance cameras, and having corrections officers wear body cameras.
The plan also calls for the creation of a computerized system that will track the use of force by guards and a warning program that flags those who use force against inmates three or more times in six months, injuring at least one of them, The New York Times reports. These steps are part of a legal settlement that for the most part has been agreed upon by lawyers for Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration, the Legal Aid society, the office of Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and a group of private lawyers who filed a class-action lawsuit against the city in 2011. The deal is expected to be completed by June 22.
Several investigative pieces by the Times, The New Yorker, The Associated Press, and other news outlets have found "widespread brutality, corruption, and dysfunction at Rikers," the Times says, with "a systematic deprivation of civil rights" for younger inmates.
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