Joshua Valles died on Saturday after being held in custody on Rikers Island by New York City's Department of Correction (DOC). Valles, 31, was technically released from custody shortly before he died. He is the third person to die during their incarceration or immediately following their technical release from the city's dangerous  jails this year and the 22nd since Mayor Eric Adams assumed office last January.

Valles, who was held in an intensive-care psychiatric unit on Rikers, was taken to the hospital on May 19 after complaining of headaches and vomiting. He suffered a seizure on the way to the hospital, where he died on May 27. The DOC initially claimed his death was the result of a heart attack, but an autopsy revealed he had a fractured skull.

That discovery has led Valles's attorneys and other advocates to question the DOC's explanation. "What we're hearing [from the autopsy]...seems to suggest that something happened to him on Rikers Island that led to his death," said Stan Germán, executive director of New York County Defender Services, which represented Valles, in an interview with Hell Gate.

Following Valles's death, the DOC announced it would no longer report to the public when people in its custody die. DOC Commissioner Louis A. Molina also tried to prevent the federal monitor charged with overseeing the department from releasing a report on a series of five incidents in city jails over six days in May, one of which was Valles's hospitalization. The report was issued the day before Valles died.

Last year, Molina was accused of attempting to hide deaths in DOC custody by releasing people just before their deaths. After learning that Elmore Robert Pondexter, who was held on Rikers Island, was in critical condition, Molina wrote in an email that the DOC should "make sure we do what we can" to keep Pondexter's death "off the Department's count." Pondexter was released hours later, just before being taken off life support.

Valles, who was charged for nonviolent crimes in April, would not have been incarcerated at all before rollbacks of New York's 2019 bail reform laws. Prior to the rollbacks, which were championed by Governor Kathy Hochul and passed through the state's budget process in 2022, Valles's charges would have not been bail-eligible. However, the new laws enabled the judge assigned to his case to set bail at $10,000, a cost Valles was unable to afford. As a result, he was sent to Rikers.

Last year, 19 people died in New York City jails. At the start of this year, Vera wrote that New York City could not afford another year of death in its jails. Since then, three more people have died in DOC custody.

1. Marvin Pines, 65, was found in the shower area of Rikers Island after having a seizure. Prior to his death he told his attorney that he was concerned about his health in detention. Medical neglect is common on Rikers and throughout DOC facilities, with thousands of missed medical appointments every month.
2. Rubu Zhao, 52, died of a fractured skull after reportedly falling from the upper floor of a Rikers Island mental health unit. He died on May 16, two days after the incident.
3. Joshua Valles, 31, died on May 27. The DOC initially said he died from a heart attack, but an autopsy showed a fractured skull. Following his death, the DOC announced it would no longer report on deaths of incarcerated people. Valles would not have been incarcerated at all prior to 2022 bail rollbacks, which made some nonviolent charges like the ones he faced bail-eligible.

These mounting deaths point to a continued failure to grapple with the conditions that have killed jailed New Yorkers at alarming rates since 2021. The federal monitor charged with overseeing the DOC called 2021 "the most dangerous" year since it assumed supervision, only to see 2022 prove more deadly. Hellish conditions persist across DOC facilities: with DOC staff absenteeism that remains higher than pre-pandemic levels, people held in shower stalls smeared with feces, negligent medical care, delays in assigning people housing, dangerously crowded intake facilities, and more.

Meanwhile, prosecutors continued to petition judges to crowd DOC facilities with yet more people, and judges were all too happy to oblige. Despite the city's existing commitment to reduce the jail population in order to close Rikers by 2027, the jail population has actually grown by 11 percent since the start of 2022, with 87 percent of those in custody held pretrial—and presumed innocent—as they await their days in court. In December, Adams's DOC Commissioner predicted that the city would not reduce the jail population enough to meet the target set as part of the agreement to close the jail complex.

Missing that target would be an abject failure by the city, which has a legal obligation to close Rikers on schedule and to immediately end the abhorrent and well-documented human rights abuses that take place in its facilities. Here are steps our leaders can take to stop the deaths in city jails:

• Reduce the jail population. The single best way to prevent another death on Rikers is to stop crowding people into its facilities, which have, once again, proven incapable of keeping them safe. Ending the overcrowding of Rikers is common sense, and Adams should work with district attorneys, public defenders, and judges to dramatically reduce pretrial detention rates and invest in alternatives to incarceration that are proven to build public safety.
• Turn over control of city jails to a federal receiver: After years of mismanagement marked by mass absenteeism, failing infrastructure, and dozens of deaths, Rikers needs to be taken over by a court-appointed expert, also known as a federal receiver. "With the NYC Department of Correction's decision to stop notifying the press of deaths in detention—on the heels of a report from the federal monitor on serious incidents of harm and death that were only brought to light by external sources and the media—it is strikingly clear that the Adams administration cannot address the deadly crisis on Rikers," said Vera President Nick Turner. "Appointing a federal receiver is necessary."
• Invest in supportive housing. The city's supportive housing program for system-involved people has proven to reduce incarceration and promote stability, and affordable housing initiatives are a popular public safety strategy among city residents. It also costs the same to provide 13 people with supportive housing for a year as it does to hold someone on Rikers for that same amount of time.
• Invest in mental health services. More than half of the people held on Rikers have mental health needs, yet mental health treatment in DOC facilities is wholly inadequate. The city should pair its decarceration efforts with an investment in community-based mental health treatment.
• Right-size DOC. The most recent data shows that DOC employed more than 7,000 correctional officers in 2022, but its plan to close Rikers dictates a jail population of 3,300 or fewer, a size that requires far fewer jail staff. Closing Rikers presents the city with an opportunity to recalibrate its budget and workforce in a way that serves New Yorkers. That means fixing the staff management issues that have plagued the DOC so that it can keep jails safe with an adequate number of staff. The city should then provide paths to transition excess staff to other opportunities and create better-paying employment opportunities for New Yorkers without postsecondary degrees.

Learn how to reach out directly to your city council member and NYC Mayor Eric Adams and share your thoughts about these abuses.

Take Action: Abuses on Rikers Island must end!