CHARON WATKINS

INMATE, 25, USES TORN SHEET TO HANG HIMSELF AT RIKERS

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
March 25, 2005

A 25-year-old inmate hanged himself in a jail cell on Rikers Island last Friday, a Correction Department spokesman said yesterday. The suicide is the second in the city jail system this year and the fifth in the last 12 months.

The inmate, Charon Watkins, had been assigned to what is known at Rikers as the punitive segregation unit, a set of cells meant to hold the most troubled or disruptive prisoners at the jail complex. He hanged himself with a torn bed sheet that he had tied to a sink faucet in his cell at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, said Thomas Antenen, the Correction Department spokesman.

Mr. Watkins, of Jamaica, Queens, had been in jail since Jan. 10, charged with second-degree robbery and drug possession, correction officials said. One Correction Department employee said Mr. Watkins's body had been found with a note nearby, on which he had scribbled the telephone number for his girlfriend.

State investigators have for years criticized the city's correction and health officials who work at Rikers for their failure to effectively tackle the problem of suicides, the leading cause of death in the country's jails.

Indeed, since 2001, investigators responsible for monitoring jails in the state have become increasingly critical of mistakes at Rikers in overseeing and treating mentally ill inmates, some of whom later killed themselves in their cells. Several state reports repeatedly urged city and Correction Department officials to follow state-issued regulations devised to reduce inmate suicides, and to punish inappropriate medical and mental health care that might have contributed to jail deaths.

After six suicides in the first half of 2003, investigators from the New York State Commission of Correction, a panel appointed by the governor to review every inmate death, saved some harsh criticism for Prison Health Services, the publicly held profit-making company that has been paid hundreds of millions of dollars since 2001 to provide medical and mental care at the city's jails.

The commission, for instance, excoriated Prison Health's care of Carina Montes, 29, who killed herself in February 2003 in the women's jail at Rikers, where she had been locked up on charges of stealing 30 tubes of lipstick from a Bronx drugstore. Prison Health's administration knew that Ms. Montes had tried to kill herself three times since age 13, the commission found, but she was never seen by a jail psychiatrist.

A few weeks earlier, Joseph Hughes, a severely disturbed 24-year-old, was found hanged four hours after a jail psychiatrist wrote that he was not a danger to himself. The commission criticized the Prison Health staff for failing to monitor him more closely.

Both the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which oversees Prison Health's work, and correction officials say that since the 2003 deaths they have worked hard to limit suicides, adopting what they say are more stringent oversight controls.

Mr. Watkins, who correction officials said had no known mental health problems, was sent to the punitive segregation unit - a dimly lighted jail known as the Bing, where inmates are kept in isolation 23 hours a day - on Feb. 23 after jail officers discovered a sharpened piece of metal in his pocket, said Mr. Antenen, the Correction Department spokesman.

Segregation units like the one Mr. Watkins was found dead in are where a disproportionate number of inmates kill themselves, said John Boston, director of the Legal Aid Society's Prisoners' Rights Project.

"Many people are not psychologically prepared to withstand prolonged periods of isolation," Mr. Boston said. "The alternative is to make segregation units a little less isolating and make sure that prisoners have decent access to medical and mental health care staff."

DAVID PENNINGTON
MILTON DIAZ

TWO INMATE SUICIDES IN SAME WEEK

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
July 24, 2004

After 13 months in which there had been only one suicide in city jails, two inmates hanged themselves in their cells this week, officials said.

Before this week, the only suicide recorded by the Department of Correction since June 2003 happened in March 2004, a significant reduction from the first half of 2003, when six inmates killed themselves. Correction officials have attributed the decline to suicide-prevention measures put in place last autumn.

Yesterday afternoon, however, David Pennington, 27, who was charged with three counts of burglary and was found hanging in his cell on Sunday night, died at Elmhurst Hospital Center, said Thomas Antenen, a Correction Department spokesman. Mr. Pennington, of Staten Island, hanged himself with a bed sheet tied to a bar on his cell door, Mr. Antenen said.

Mr. Pennington, who had been in custody at Rikers Island since June 1, had been jailed six times since 2001, Mr. Antenen said, on charges including assault, petty larceny and disorderly conduct.

On Monday morning, Milton Diaz, 33, of the Bronx, was found hanging from a ceiling grate in a cell at the Vernon C. Bain Center, the floating barge in the Bronx, department officials said.

Mr. Diaz, in jail since June 26 after being charged with aggravated criminal contempt, had created a makeshift noose from shoelaces and a towel, department officials said. He had been in city jails at least twice before, officials said, on charges related to assault and drug possession.

The other suicide this year happened on March 30, when Kevin Mitchell, 22, hanged himself in his Rikers Island cell a few hours after being sentenced to prison for rape, officials said.

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