PRP’s lawsuit against the New York City Department of Education to provide schooling to high school youth held in adult jails resulted in the opening of a new high school on Rikers Island and a transformation of how the City provided education in the jails.

PRP’s medical care litigation in various state prisons and the Rikers Island Infirmary set the standards for the rest of the jail and prison system.  We also brought statewide litigation about the treatment of prisoners with HIV, which resulted in substantial improvements in HIV care throughout the prison system.

Improving safety and living conditions in City jails
After the Tombs riots in the early 1970s over abysmal jail conditions, PRP began a program of litigation to force the New York City jails to comply with constitutional standards of decency. PRP’s jail conditions litigation resulted in the closing of the old “Tombs” and shoddy modular housing units built during the incarceration boom of the 1980s; sanitation, ventilation and hygiene standards to protect health; air-conditioning for people locked in punitive segregation units 23 hours per day to mitigate the risk of heat-related illness; and maintenance of fire alarms in all facilities.

PRP succeeded in ending the practice of double-celling incarcerated people in cells designed for a single persons and obtained overcrowding orders now embodied in the City Board of Correction Minimum Standards.

Through settlement of a statewide challenge to inadequate mental health care in the New York State prison system, PRP and advocates required New York State to overhaul treatment programs for people with mental illness. The lawsuit brought new limits on the use and severity of isolated confinement for people with mental illness.

PRP seeks to protect incarcerated women from sexual abuse by staff by strengthening supervision and accountability. We have been counsel in two systemic lawsuits challenging New York’s failure to protect women in DOCCS prison facilities from sexual abuse by correctional staff, including forcible rape; have helped many women obtain damages for their abuse with the assistance of pro bono counsel; and actively promote regulations to protect against sexual abuse, such as by serving on the Department of Justice’s Expert Panel on regulations to implement the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

When people held in the City jails before trial were subjected to extensive cell confinement with little time out of the tiny cells and few opportunities for exercise, PRP obtained orders and agreements requiring the jails to provide daily access to outdoor exercise. These became enshrined in the minimum standards of the New York City Board of Correction. We have successfully fought back infringement of these standards in court, and actively campaign to halt solitary and isolated confinement in prisons and jails.

PRP’s litigation placed due process and medical limits on painful restraint practices that kept people incarcerated in City jails shackled and rear-handcuffed for up to 14 hours at a time during transportation and holding for court appearances. PRP also obtained orders limiting the shackling of incarcerated people held on hospital civilian wards, and barring shackling pregnant incarcerated women taken to hospitals for delivery.

We engage in substantial advocacy to inform public policies affecting the lives of people who are incarcerated. We advocated for changes in the Department of Justice regulations implementing the Prison Rape Elimination Act and revisions to the state medical parole statute. We advocate before the City Board of Correction, which has regulatory authority over the City jails. We also have a vigorous program of non-litigation advocacy for individuals in both City and State custody, helping them obtain necessary medical or mental health care, ensuring their placement in protective custody, and in many cases providing them with the information they need to protect their own rights.