Rikers Island sees yet another inmate death – the fifth in-custody fatality this year

Another Rikers Island inmate died on Monday night while locked up in the city’s correctional facility — the fifth such death this year.

The Department of Correction (DOC) reported that the inmate was found “visibly ill” inside the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers Island at about 9:18 p.m. on March 31. Staff members had located the ill inmate while doing a routine tour.

Officials rendered aid to the inmate and called medical staff, but all efforts proved futile; the individual was pronounced dead at about 9:56 p.m.

Published reports identified him as Dashawn Jenkins, 27, who had been incarcerated at Rikers on an attempted murder charge dating back to July 2024. The DOC subsequently confirmed his identity.

Jenkins had been represented by the Legal Aid Society, which demanded “an immediate, swift and independent investigation” while also calling for oversight and management of Rikers Island to be shifted away from the city and toward an independent body.

“With every devastating loss, City Hall and DOC leadership continually refuse to provide counsel, the client’s family, and the public with even the most basic details of what occurred. This ongoing lack of transparency is not only callous but also intolerable,” said the Legal Aid Society and Queens Defenders in a joint statement. “This is the fifth Rikers Island-related death this year. This needless loss of a young life underscores the urgent need for the immediate appointment of an independent body, such as a receivership, to take over the city’s jail system.”

Meanwhile, the Correction Department says it has alerted the individual’s attorney of the inmate’s death as well as the federal monitor overseeing Rikers Island, the Board of Correction, the city Department of Investigation, the state Attorney General’s Office and the state Commission of Correction, as per standard protocol.

“The department is mourning the loss of someone in our care who passed away on the evening of March 31,” said Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie. “We share our condolences with his loved ones and will investigate every aspect of this tragedy.”

The latest Rikers Island death followed four other in-custody deaths that the Correction Department reported since the start of the year. On March 20, a woman was found dead inside her cell in the West Facility on Rikers Island. A week earlier, 20-year-old Ariel Quidone died after being found unconscious in his holding cell.

Monday’s reported death marks the 38th of its kind since the start of the Adams administration in January 2022, according to the Freedom Agenda.

A city law passed in 2019 mandates the closure of Rikers Island by 2027, though it is unclear whether that mandate will be reached. The city has yet to complete the four community-based jails across the city that would replace Rikers, with those plans receiving boisterous community opposition.

Last month, an independent panel cautioned that the city is not in a position to meet the 2027 closure mandate but urged stakeholders to follow a new blueprint for closing Rikers down permanently.

Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain previously held the city in contempt for ongoing violence and dilapidated conditions on Rikers Island, and for violating the consent decree in the Nunez vs. City of New York case for improving conditions. She is now considering putting Rikers into federal receivership, which would allow the Justice Department to directly oversee the facility’s operations.

The Freedom Agenda is a criminal justice advocacy group that has repeatedly demanded the closure of Rikers Island. The group’s co-director, Darren Mack, laid the blame at the feet of Mayor Adams for the latest death at the correctional facility.

“From day one of his administration, Eric Adams has done everything in his power fill up Rikers. And despite his jails killing five people in less than five weeks, he and his police commissioner are still advocating for changes to state law that will strip away due process rights, still pressuring judges and DAs to send more people to suffer and die at Rikers simply because they can’t pay bail, and still slashing funding for alternatives to incarceration,” Mack said. “It’s sickening and immoral. We know that no one is safe at Rikers – it’s time to stop sending people there. Now!”

Updated on April 1 at 12:45 p.m.