Harvey Weinstein becomes an unlikely voice in the debate over Rikers

New York: Advocates for closing Rikers Island, New York City's sprawling 400-acre complex of notoriously dangerous and violent jails, have found an unlikely champion in Harvey Weinstein.

Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul whose fall set off the #MeToo movement with dozens of women accusing him of sexual misconduct, has been held at Rikers since a sex-crime conviction in New York was overturned last April.

Since then, his lawyers have lodged many complaints about his stay at the complex, petitioning the court to relocate him and filing notice they will sue the city over his medical care. Weinstein, 73, has personally spoken to the judge overseeing his case about his accommodations, which he called a "hellhole," using his notoriety to draw attention to the troubled jail complex's history of medical negligence.

Last week, as a retrial in his case got underway, his lawyers filed an emergency petition to move him to a secured unit at Bellevue Hospital Center. Weinstein's lawyers have said he has diabetes, spinal stenosis, and fluid on his heart and lungs, among other ailments. In September, he was hospitalized for emergency heart surgery. The next month, he was diagnosed with cancer.

The "mistreatment and mismanagement" of his conditions has become life-threatening, his lawyer, Imran H. Ansari, argued to a civil judge last week. The judge ordered that Weinstein be held at the hospital until this Thursday, when a hearing will determine if he remains there for the trial.

Shayla Mulzac-Warner, a Department of Correction spokesperson, declined to comment on the potential lawsuit.

"The safety and health of every person in our jails will always be our top priority," Mulzac-Warner said.

For decades, coalitions of lawyers and community advocates, with the support of City Council leaders, have tried to force the city to confront problems at the complex that include violence, denial of medical care and decaying buildings. Progress has been slow. Since 2022, at least 38 people have died either while being held at New York City jails or shortly after being released, according to city data.

Now, Weinstein, whose wealth was estimated at about $300 million before lawsuits, a divorce and legal fees in several criminal trials, has joined the chorus.

"It's been horrific for everyone, not just Harvey Weinstein," said Darren Mack, co-director of Freedom Agenda, a nonprofit that works for individuals and communities affected by incarceration in New York City. He said Weinstein's fame and wealth don't diminish the harm.

"No one deserves to be exposed to those inhumane conditions that Rikers has been doling out to New Yorkers for decades," Mack said.

In January, Weinstein complained about Rikers to Justice Curtis Farber, who is overseeing his criminal trial, in a minuteslong colloquy. He said that his day-to-day treatment -- missed appointments and misdiagnosis -- had been "a struggle for my heart." He had been given the wrong medication as recently as that morning, he said.

"I'm in a serious emergency situation," he told Farber, later adding: "So many of the people I'm with at prison are going through similar problems. They don't have the same mouthpiece as I have."

Weinstein is not the first unlikely proponent of change in jails, said Liz Komar, sentencing reform counsel at the Sentencing Project. When the defendants who were charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot began complaining about conditions at the Washington, D.C., jail, an issue people had been raising for at least three decades, Republican lawmakers reacted quickly. They toured the facilities and held hearings. US marshals conducted an inspection, and about 400 detainees were moved to Pennsylvania, she said. The momentum helped pass the Federal Prison Oversight Act last year, Komar said.

"It's very helpful at this moment in time, when there's been delays in shutting down Rikers, to have the extremely poor conditions at Rikers back in the press," she said. "Even if that's in the context of Mr. Weinstein's detention."

But as a high-profile inmate whose stays have included a hospital and protective custody -- he was being held at the West Facility, which is made up of single-cell units -- Weinstein has had an experience that is distinct. He has a cell to himself with a shower and television. Many detained men share living quarters in dorms for up to 50 people.

For Mack, who spent a year in Rikers as a 17-year-old in the early 1990s, Weinstein's grievances reflect what detainees have been saying for decades. Rikers' population had hit a peak with a daily average of 21,449 people when he was incarcerated, Mack said, but for many New Yorkers, the complex was "out of sight and out of mind."

The City Council in 2019 voted to close Rikers and replace it with smaller jails in four of the city's five boroughs by 2027. The city is not on track to meet the deadline, and a second commission last month released a revitalized plan to meet the requirement.

New York City has been sued many times over conditions at Rikers. For a decade, a federal judge, Laura Taylor Swain, has been keeping watch over the complex through reports by court monitors appointed to oversee reforms.

In November, as conditions continued to deteriorate, Swain found the city in contempt for failing to stem violence and excessive force and said she was leaning toward stripping control from New York Mayor Eric Adams and handing it to an outside authority known as a receiver.

Weinstein's stint at Rikers Island began when he was transferred from a prison last year after a court overturned his 2020 conviction on sex-crimes charges in New York. He had been serving a 23-year sentence. Weinstein has also been convicted in California on sex-crime charges and faces a prison term there. Weinstein is being held in Department of Correction custody without bail while his case is being retried in New York.

Weinstein stands out from other detainees at the city's jails, where about 7% are white and about 23% are older than 70, according to city data.

Typically, when a high-profile criminal defendant calls for changes to jails and prisons, they do so after they are no longer detained, said Elizabeth Glazer, founder of Vital City and a former criminal justice adviser under Mayor Bill de Blasio. The purpose of Weinstein's recent statements is most likely "to improve his own conditions," she said.

"He needs to do what he needs to do for himself," Glazer said. "He may be calling for the reform of the entire system, but his immediate purpose is relief for himself."