A 36-year-old detainee awaiting trial on an attempted-murder charge was found dead in his bed Tuesday morning inside a Rikers Island jail, adding another name to a death toll that has been mounting through 2026. The cause of death was not immediately known.
The man was found at the Robert N. Davoren Center, one of 10 jails on Rikers Island, according to The City Reporter, which said it is withholding the detainee's name until his next of kin is notified. The outlet reported that, according to the NYPD, the man was arrested March 7 after allegedly punching a stranger in the face and ear at a subway station and trying to throw him onto the tracks in front of an incoming train.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Department of Correction had not issued a public announcement of the death and did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the outlet reported. All deaths in custody are reviewed by the city's Board of Correction along with several other government agencies.
A Death Toll That Keeps Shifting
A City Reporter story described the death as the ninth in city jail custody so far in 2026, citing 15 deaths in 2025, five in 2024, nine in 2023 and 19 in 2022. The Department of Correction counted seven people who had died in its custody in 2026. A Gothamist report published Sept. 25 put the year's toll at a minimum of eight while covering an oversight board’s findings on a cluster of earlier deaths, via Gothamist.
That same oversight board, the Board of Correction, has issued multiple reports faulting jail officers and medical staff for failing to provide proper care in other deaths behind bars, the article notes. A report issued in September, examining four recent deaths, found that correction officers had failed to conduct meaningful tours of housing areas, kept inaccurate handwritten logbook entries, left their posts, and allowed detainees to gather in unassigned areas because of broken cell doors. Gothamist reported separately that unauthorized drugs may have played a role in three of those four deaths.
A Pattern of Delayed Response
The September report detailed how 49-year-old John Price waited three hours and 34 minutes in a clinic holding pen after he was produced at the clinic before a medical provider saw him, with officers never alerting available nurses that he needed care, per the same account. In another case cited in that report, the body of detainee Barry Cozart was not found until roughly 14 hours after he was last seen moving.
Other deaths this year have followed medical emergencies at Rikers facilities and, in one case, at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. In August, a correction officer found 41-year-old Clarence Woodward suffering a medical emergency at the Robert N. Davoren Center around 5 a.m.; he died at 5:40 a.m., according to the New York Daily News. That same report noted that 36-year-old Christopher Rodriguez had died in DOC custody at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan after suffering a medical episode on Aug. 18.
Reform Plans Still Taking Shape
Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards and federal jail remediation manager Nicholas Deml are in the midst of developing a series of reform plans. Richards has discussed restricting physical mail as a way to reduce drug-soaked letters entering the jail system, an idea that echoes a similar proposal that failed to gain approval from the Board of Correction in 2023.
