In court documents filed on Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court, lawyers for detainees who say they are denied adequate medical care called for the Department of Correction to be held in contempt for failing to comply with a court order compelling the department to provide it. The filing also seeks monetary redress for every instance since early December in which a detainee was denied medical care.

...

In their motion, the lawyers pointed to an affidavit from the city that showed that there were more than 1,000 instances in December alone in which a detainee did not make a scheduled medical appointment because a guard was not available to escort them. And while the city claims that more 5,000 times that month, detainees refused to attend scheduled medical appointments, the filing cast doubt on that number, and a doctor who recently left Correctional Health Services said the number was probably overblown.

Brooke Menschel, a lawyer with Brooklyn Defender Services, said that the organizations had received hundreds of reports over the last several years from people who the Department of Correction said had refused medical care, but who said they were not, in fact, offered care by the department.

“We’ve got people who’ve been asking to go to the clinic for months, begging for care,” Ms. Menschel said. “And then all of a sudden, D.O.C. is saying they’re refusing. Logically speaking, that doesn’t really make sense.”

View the full New York Times article here.