Judges Ordered to Open Court in N.Y. Jail as Soaring Drug Arrests Strain Facilities

With prisoners sleeping on floors and a federal judge threatening to release inmates to reduce overcrowding, municipal judges were ordered Monday to open a special court inside New York City’s biggest jail to speed sentencing so inmates can be shifted to state prisons.

In addition, Sol Wachtler, chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, reassigned half the city’s civil court judges to criminal trials and asked other justices to defer vacations.

Soaring drug arrests coupled with increases in other crimes are straining New York’s criminal justice system. Jail barges have been pressed into service, a homeless shelter has been converted into a prison and plans have been put forth to remodel the New York Coliseum--a former exhibition hall in mid-Manhattan--into a temporary jail.

103% of Capacity

The jails are now at 103% of capacity. Recently, the city advertised in newspapers for other buildings that quickly could be changed to detention facilities.

In the first three months of this year, 4,598 people were arrested on felony narcotics charges in Manhattan alone--a 64% increase over last year.

“Our problem is a lack of resources to bring those arrests to disposition,” said Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert M. Morgenthau. “The sad truth is that some drug dealers receive undeserved leniency because insufficient resources necessitate unwanted plea bargaining.”

“Moreover, even though the state has increased prison space significantly, prison overcrowding remains a pressing problem. Unless more resources become available, good arrests will go unprosecuted, and drug traffickers will go unpunished.”

Earlier this month, the Legal Aid Society, citing serious jail overcrowding, filed a contempt motion against the city. A legal aid lawyer took U.S. District Judge Morris E. Lasker on an unannounced tour of Rikers Island, the largest municipal penitentiary. Lasker found prisoners sleeping on mattresses on the floors of receiving rooms.

In 1983, in an effort to reduce the numbers of prisoners at packed city jails, Lasker ordered 613 inmates be freed before their sentences were completed.

On Monday, municipal officials gave Lasker a plan to improve prison conditions and asked him to defer for 30 days a suit by prisoners charging the city violated his 1981 order against confining inmates to jail holding pens and gymnasiums.

The plan submitted by Correction Commissioner Richard J. Koehler called for improving the processing of new inmates, adding a new admissions control center to identify logjams, beefing up the medical staff to conduct entrance physicals and quicker repair of broken cells.

Judge Wachtler announced at a press conference that judges would be sent to Rikers Island to sentence 2,500 defendants who have negotiated guilty pleas. These prisoners can then be quickly transferred to upstate prisons. He said additional civil judges will be transferred to hear criminal cases.

“There will be a case of musical benches,” Wachtler said.

Prosecutors, pressing for more judges and correctional facilities, stress that overcrowded jails are not just a New York City phenomenon.

“To date,” said Morgenthau, who appeared with Wachtler, “the Congress has funded only one half of the $2.8-billion Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988.” Morgenthau charged that the Bush Administration, while committed to fighting the war against drugs inside Washington’s Beltway, was ignoring New York and the rest of the country.

“It is time to recognize that drug dealing in Washington Heights is as much a federal concern as drug dealing in Washington, D.C.,” the prosecutor added. “A giant first step toward a kinder, gentler America is a swifter, firmer response to drug traffickers.”