PRP’s past litigation brought the elimination of overcrowding and reforms in access to media, reading materials and telephones, religious services and other religious rights, food service, search procedures, family visiting procedures, prisoner security classification, disciplinary proceedings, the safeguarding of prisoners’ property, and many other areas of jail life. In the Benjamin litigation, PRP has more recently obtained orders requiring improvements in sanitation procedures, ventilation, lighting, protection from extremes of heat and cold, attorney visiting procedures, and security restraint procedures, and is seeking to enforce compliance with them, and to obtain improvements in fire safety.
PRP is now preparing to respond to a new threat to prisoners’ welfare: proposed amendments to the minimum standards of the City Board of Correction, the supposed jail “watchdog” agency, which would authorize more crowding, cut back on assistance to Spanish-speaking prisoners, put protective custody prisoners in 23-hour lock-in like inmates being punished for disciplinary infractions, deny pre-trial detainees the right to wear civilian clothes, and provide for eavesdropping on detainees’ telephone calls and letters on jail officials’ say-so, with no warrant requirement or other check on official discretion.