Mayor Adams must demand Rikers release inmate-death data

Mayor Eric Adams literally wants to hide the bodies — supporting his correction commissioner’s bizarre decision to stop reporting deaths at Rikers Island.

It’s the latest example of Adams going with his own worst instincts, but it’s easy to see why he thinks he’ll get away with it.

The federal “monitor” overseeing Rikers obviously has no interest in seizing jails.

The City news outlet reported last week the jail system has a new policy: No news is good news.

Previously, the Department of Correction sent out a press release informing the media of a death; no more.

Adams says he’s OK with this, supporting Commissioner Louis Molina in “whatever methods he needs.”

Reporting deaths is important — self-evidently because a person’s life is valuable.

But for another reason: Deaths are the only credible marker of Rikers progress. All other data can be fudged.

By this one measure, it’s hard to see any progress at Rikers during the Adams administration.

For the five years before 2020, Rikers reported an average of fewer than nine deaths annually.

In 2020, deaths reached 11 (only three from COVID). In 2021, deaths skyrocketed to 16 (none from COVID); last year, they reached 19.

Suicides and overdoses have soared, accounting for at least 12 of last year’s deaths.

Death have risen even as the Rikers population has fallen.

So how many people have died this year? No one knows.

Adams appointees have told the federal monitor overseeing the jails that “it is not a requirement” to “report deaths in-custody.”

The federal monitor says this is “inaccurate,” but “it is unclear whether the department intends to provide the information in the future.”

We know of at least three — and one under mysterious circumstances, suggesting a coverup.

Rikers officials insisted 31-year-old inmate Joshua Valles had a heart attack last month; after they brought him to the hospital, the jail “compassionately released” him so he wouldn’t officially die in jail.

But Valles didn’t have a heart attack; he died of a fractured skull, and his lawyer said he also had a “severe brain injury.”

How did he — or someone else — fracture his skull? He had fought with another inmate a month before.

Rikers hasn’t had a murder in years. The real possibility that this was one should make Rikers officials more transparent, not less.

In another May case, the federal monitor learned about a suicide only because jail sources leaked it to the press.

The monitor’s inquiry then went ignored; correction officials said it landed in a “spam” folder.

“It landed in spam” is the excuse we use when we don’t feel like logging on to a Zoom meeting — it’s not an excuse to avoid communications with your federal watchdog about a preventable death.

But you can’t blame Adams for thinking he can get away with this.

Rikers has been under the court-decreed federal monitor for nearly a decade. But the only thing the federal monitor has done all that time is complain.

The monitor still hasn’t asked a federal judge to OK a full federal takeover of the jails, despite failure after failure.

Until late last year, the monitor was praising “unprecedented” progress at the facilities.

All that progress is based on data the jails provide — and it was never all that impressive.

Slashings and stabbings this year are 40% below last year’s levels, yes. But they’re still four times 2019 levels.

More important, though, if you confuse a heart attack with a skull fracture, how do we trust these numbers?

In day-to-day life, voters can see whether Adams’ rhetoric matches reality.

Is he managing the migrant crisis well — or are dozens of migrants standing in the middle of the street because the plumbing in their supposedly fit-for-purpose shelter “exploded” a day after it opened?

Is the city making progress on enforcing laws against homeless encampments — or are people still camped out on Upper West Side streets?

But Rikers is a closed system: You cannot go inside the jails and see for yourself whether things seem better or not.

And nobody is going to vote on the issue.

Out of sight, out of mind — the most tempting circumstances for the people in charge to confuse a skull fracture with a heart attack.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.