New data from the city’s jails show hundreds of overdoses or suspected overdoses have occurred on Rikers Island in the last year and half — further evidence of the drug problem plaguing the city's massive jails complex.

NY1 obtained data from Correctional Health Services, which provides medical care on Rikers, revealing that between January 2021 and June 2022, there were at least 431 overdoses or suspected overdoses in city jails.

This data comes after the group conducted thousands of medical chart reviews examining medical emergencies where Narcan or Naloxone (drugs administered to reverse opioid overdoses) were mentioned or if an overdose or K2 were mentioned in the chart.

During the height of the city’s staffing crisis on Rikers, these numbers climbed significantly. In August of 2021, when a large percentage of correction officers were calling out sick, there were 56 suspected overdoses in city jails. In that same month, on average 2,672 correction department staff workers were either out sick, AWOL or on medically modified duty and unable to work with detainees.

During this time period, at least seven detainees died from an overdose. Several other deaths at Rikers are suspected overdoses, but their official cause of death is still pending at the medical examiner’s office.

"As overdose rates continue to rise across NYC, Correctional Health Services (CHS) remains committed to reducing risks of substance use harms among persons detained in the City's jails,” a spokesperson for Correctional Health Services said in a statement to NY1.

"CHS operates the nation’s oldest and largest jail-based opioid treatment program, providing methadone and buprenorphine maintenance to patients with substance use disorders and providing linkages to community-based treatment and harm-reduction services," the spokesperson added. "In December of 2021, we also launched an initiative to train on the use of, and make available, naloxone kits to patients in their housing units. This has already proved life-saving."