New York City will pay $850,000 to settle a lawsuit stemming from the beating of an inmate at Rikers Island that fit a rogue disciplinary pattern cited by law enforcement officials in which favored prisoners, in a system known as the Program, received tacit approval to keep order by assaulting and threatening other prisoners.

The resolution of the case comes after the city agreed in July to pay $1.5 million to settle a suit stemming from the death of an inmate under different circumstances — a struggle with correction officers in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital Center; and in June, a $2 million settlement of another Program lawsuit that involved a fatal beating.

In settling the matters, the city admitted no wrongdoing. But the cases point to what lawyers and other advocates for prisoners say is a wider and disturbing problem of unjustifiably harsh treatment of prisoners in city jails.

In May, the Legal Aid Society, and two law firms, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady and Ropes & Gray, filed a separate lawsuit seeking class-action status and citing a “deeply entrenched” pattern of brutality in the jails.