Outraged by yet another suicide at Rikers Island Social justice activist group “Rights for Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities” (RIPPD) holds a “SILENT PROTEST"

Contact: Lisa Ortega at 646-602-5664
April 15, 2005

Friday, April 15, 2005, at 250 Broadway, New York, NY, from 11a.m. to 1:30 p.m., members of RIPPD, a grassroots social justice organization made up of former prisoners with mental illness and family members, will be out in full force convening a “Silent Protest.” We will be holding a procession from the City Council office building at 250 Broadway to the administrative office of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene at 225 Broadway, in mourning for those who lost their lives due to suicide at Rikers Island. There will be a large Grim Reaper, representing Prison Health Services (PHS), the out-of-state, for-profit company that provides health and mental health treatment to people incarcerated at Rikers Island. PHS has a history of inadequate and fatal services to inmates. Our protestors will have white bed sheets around their necks to symbolize how inmates hung themselves.

RIPPD is targeting the City Council, Department of Corrections (DOC) Commissioner Martin Horn, and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) Deputy Commissioner of Health Care Access and Improvement James Capoziello. We met with Commissioner Horn and Deputy Commissioner Capoziello over a year ago, before the PHS contract was renewed. We alerted them of the inadequate services provided by PHS on Rikers Island. We implored him not to renew their contract, but we were not taken seriously. We were “silenced.” We tried to convince Council Member Margarita Lopez to hold a public hearing on this issue, but she refused. Once again we were “silenced.”

“We are absolutely outraged and will not be silenced anymore,” says Ellen Logan, RIPPD member. “How dare they?! Because we are former prisoners with psychiatric disabilities, the powers that be don’t feel like they have to be held accountable to us. Had they listened to us over a year ago, lives could have been saved.”

PHS began receiving contracts in New York State over the last decade despite a tarnished record of providing care in Florida and Pennsylvania. Since then, the State Commission of Correction has faulted the company in 23 inmates’ deaths and has recommended disciplinary action of PHS doctors and nurses 15 times in the past four years. The New York Times notes that in one report the chairman of the Commission’s medical review board Fredrick C. Lamy labeled the company, “reckless and unprincipled in its corporate pursuits, irrespective of patient care.” Despite this, New York City renewed its contract in January of this year.

RIPPD member Leah Gitter states, “Commissioner Martin Horn’s arrogance of power and complete disregard for the health of the Riker’s population in promoting a system that is a failure is unacceptable to the consumers and family members in the mental health community.”