In the fall of 2021, Brooklyn Defender Services, The Legal Aid Society, and law firm Milbank sued the Department of Correction (DOC) for failing to comply with its duty to provide people in custody with access to medical care. The litigation, brought by four people on behalf of everyone in DOC custody who had failed to receive access to medical care, seeks to enforce state and local law, including the Board of Correction Minimum Standards.

On December 3, 2021, the Bronx Civil Supreme Court found that DOC failed to comply with these laws and ordered the agency to immediately comply with its duty to provide people with access to medical care. According to the order, DOC must immediately comply with its legal duties to provide medical services to all persons in NYC jails, by:

• providing all class members with access to sick call on weekdays and make sick call available a minimum of five days per week within 24 hours of a request;

• providing sufficient security to allow class members movement to and from health services in the jails; and

• not prohibiting or delaying class members’ access to care, appropriate treatment, or medical or dental services.

Following an admission by a DOC official that the Department was not complying with the December court order to provide basic access to medical care for incarcerated New Yorkers, Legal Aid, Brooklyn Defender Services, and Milbank LLP filed a motion for contempt in February 2022.

In May 2022, the Court found DOC in contempt for failing to follow the December 3rd, 2021 order.

In August 2022, the Court ordered DOC to pay roughly $200,000 in fines to New Yorkers who were denied access to medical treatment in local jails, in addition to Plaintiffs’ attorneys fees and costs. In September, DOC appealed this order.

In the year since the court ordered DOC to comply with its duties to provide people in its custody with access to medical care, New York City jails have recorded the highest death rate in DOC facilities in over 25 years. Reports from the NYC Board of Correction tie several of these deaths to DOC’s failures to provide access to medical care, and nearly everyone who died in custody missed numerous appointments.

In December 2022, Petitioners filed a motion in Agnew v. New York City Department of Correction (DOC) in Bronx Supreme Court, requesting the court hold DOC in contempt for its past and ongoing failure to provide incarcerated New Yorkers access to medical care and award a $250 fine for each missed medical appointment from February to October 2022, totaling over $3.08 million. In the event that DOC continues to fail to provide access to medical care, Petitioners ask the Court to grant an evidentiary hearing to determine the maximum number of people for whom DOC can safely provide access to medical care.