Probe finds NYC jail guards hired despite arrests, gang ties

More than one-third of jail guards recently hired by the New York City Department of Correction (DOC) had previous gang affiliations, criminal histories or significant psychological problems, the city Department of Investigation (DOI) said on Thursday.

Investigators randomly pulled 153 application files of guards hired last year and found that 54 — or 35 percent — "presented significant red flags that should have either precluded their hiring outright or required further follow-up."

The probe found 79 hired officers admitted having friends or family members who were inmates — including one with nine relatives who had served time in Rikers Island jail complex. Ten new hires had been arrested more than once, and another 12 had been rejected by the significantly higher standards of the New York Police Department, including six for psychological reasons and one who failed a drug test.

To become a correction officer, candidates who take a civil service exam are vetted by jail application investigators, who conduct background checks, psychological screenings and other evaluations. A jail official then recommends an applicant be accepted or rejected, but the deputy commissioner in charge of hiring can override that decision.

Jails Commissioner Joseph Ponte, who has pledged to reform the troubled correction department, said in a statement he was committed to "improving staff recruitment, training and retention" and would implement many of the investigators' recommendations, automatically disqualifying applicants who had been fired from a public agency or had any felony convictions in the past five years.

All of the applicants reviewed in the DOI report were hired before Ponte took office in April 2014.

Among other findings, there was no evidence applicants had been screened for gang affiliation, even though the jails' own intelligence officers rank it as the top threat to safety. It wasn't until after probe began that the jails began taking photos of applicants' tattoos to check for possible gang ties.

Following the investigation, three of the problem hires have already been fired for misconduct, including one who had an "unduly familiar" relationship with an inmate later arrested in a murder-for-hire plot. Two of the hires resigned.

“At commissioner Ponte’s direction, DOC will review the background checks that were performed on the individuals in question, and will re-investigate those individuals,” a DOC spokesman told Al Jazeera in an email.

The report comes a month after federal authorities announced they would sue the city over widespread violations of civil rights of teenage inmates at Rikers.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for New York's southern district, said they were acting to end a pattern of violent abuse of adolescent male inmates by guards and others held at Rikers. Other recent investigations by the city Department of Investigation have resulted in guards charged with smuggling contraband, falsifying documents and evidence and using excessive force. 

Last January, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) said that of the sex assault and rape allegations involving inmates between 2009 and 2011, nearly half of them were committed against prisoners by correction officers.

In September, the secretary of Florida's prison system fired 32 guards, all reportedly accused of criminal misconduct or wrongdoing stemming from inmate deaths at four prisons.

In June, the American Civil Liberties Union penned a letter to Holder calling for a federal investigation into inmate Darren Rainey's death in Florida, saying that the state had attempted to "cover it up."

The letter said that Rainey was blasted with scalding hot water in a locked closet-sized shower as a punishment at the state's Dade Correctional Institution in Miami.

After two hours, Rainey was found dead with his skin separated from his body, the letter stated. The water temperature was later measured at 180 degrees, according to court records.

Al Jazeera and wire services