A New York Court of Claims judge ruled last week in favor of an incarcerated man who said the state’s prison system never gave him 20 packs of cigarettes he was sent while serving time in an upstate correctional facility, ordering the state to pay him $250 to make up for its error.
Nicholas Serrano was serving a prison sentence in a special housing unit at Washington Correctional Facility upstate when a family member sent him 20 packs of Newport cigarettes, along with a few other items, like towels and Reebok sneakers, in 2021.
Records show all items arrived at the prison, but Serrano elected to ship everything back to the sender except for the cigarettes — something documents submitted to the court specifically note the prison knew.
He wasn’t allowed to access the nicotine due to the rules in his housing unit at the time, but the packs were supposed to be kept alongside his personal belongings that would travel with him, and be handed over to him when he was eventually moved to a unit where cigarettes were permitted.
However, when Serrano was transferred to Clinton Correctional Facility, the cigarettes were not among the items that had moved with him and he never saw them.
New York Court of Claims Judge Zainab Chaudhry ruled that the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) was negligent in its handling of Serrano’s property. It was clear, the judge said, that the state had no defense for losing Serrano’s cigarettes and had no idea where they were.
“The State has a common-law duty to secure the personal property of incarcerated persons when such property is in its possession and, as a bailee, may be held liable for a breach of that duty,” Chaudhry wrote. “[DOCCS] acknowledges that, after reviewing the available records, it was unable ‘to locate documents necessary to establish that the property was returned to [Serrano]’ or ‘to determine any permissible basis or reason why [Seranno’s] property was not returned to him.’”
DOCCS did not respond to a request for comment on the case or to a question on the policies in place regarding keeping incarcerated people’s items safe.
Not uncommon for inmates to be denied property by prisons
FILE – A jail door at the North Infirmary Command (NIC) jailhouse on Rikers Island.Photo by Dean Moses
Serrano’s lost 20 packs of cigarettes is far from a rarity, said James Bogin, a senior attorney with Prisoners Legal Services of New York. He told amNewYork it felt to him that nearly every time DOCCS transfers incarcerated people between prisons they lose their property.
“To me it seems that just about everyone who gets transferred ends up losing property,” Bogin said. “Why? I don’t know. It seems so obviously a necessary element of running a prison system, you’d think they have systems in place to ensure people don’t lose property. It just seems ridiculous that this basic function of a prison system can’t be accomplished.”
Most incarcerated people who file a lawsuit over lost or stolen property represent themselves like Serrano did, as the attorney fees they’d have to pay would exceed the monetary award they would get if their suit is successful.
While straightforward, the process can be lengthy and dependent on people’s ability to read, write, and engage with the legal system while incarcerated, said Bogin.
People first have to file an internal claim with DOCCS alleging their property has been lost and requesting compensation. Only if that claim is denied, or they are offered less than they believe they are owed, can they move to appeal and file a lawsuit in the state’s Court of Claims.
“It’s doable, but probably not for everyone,” said Bogin. He added that he believed filing suits like this in the state’s Court of Claims would have a decent success rate and be easier than filing or winning any type of federal suit or civil rights claim and that the process was relatively “user-friendly.”
But it’s difficult to know for sure. There’s no organized data on how often people bring, lose or win lost property cases in prison, so it’s nearly impossible to capture the bigger picture, Bogin said.
What he does know, however, is that losing your things in jail has a significant impact on people.
“These are people who have very little,” Bogin added. “People in prison don’t have much they can call their own, so it is very traumatic when the little bit they do have disappears for no known reason.”