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Correction commissioner wants more staff for troubled jails system
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Mar 23, 2022
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By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Mar 23, 2022
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The head of the city’s beleaguered jail system said he expects the agency will likely need to hire more correction officers as rampant staff absences continue to sow disorder on Rikers Island.
Testifying at a City Council budget hearing on Wednesday, Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina said he would need “additional staff” beginning this summer, when the city implements its stalled plan to limit solitary confinement.
“As we’re moving forward with a new restrictive housing model, we’re going to need more resources,” Molina said. He declined to put a number on the agency’s headcount needs, but said that talks were underway with the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget.
“The inefficiencies of the layout of our facilities and the increase in our population, there’s a cost to all of that,” he added.
The request for more staff has long been a priority for the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association, the powerful union for correction officers. But it could set off a budget battle with progressive lawmakers, who said that managerial failures and a lack of consequences for AWOL staffers have allowed the crisis on Rikers Island to fester.
“The department’s failures to manage its staff is directly linked to the perilous breakdowns of safety and security as well as soaring rates of violence and use of force,” said Carlina Rivera, chair of the criminal justice committee. “Simply increasing the number of staff will not solve the department’s problems.”
Rikers Island has long had the highest rate of staff to detainees of any jail in the country. The city now spends more than half a million dollars to incarcerate one person for a year, a nearly fourfold increase since 10 years ago, according to a new analysis from city Comptroller Brad Lander.
“The problem isn’t a lack of resources, it's how those resources are being managed,” Lander said on Wednesday.
In his testimony, Molina also defended the agency’s progress in stabilizing Rikers Island while noting that the jail system’s “long-standing issues were not going to be fixed in my first three months.”
Many of those issues were laid bare in a report issued last week by a court-appointed federal monitor, which found that conditions in the jail remained “unstable and unsafe.”
As of late January, the absence rate among correctional staff remained stuck at 30%, preventing detainees from accessing thousands of medical appointments and contributing to rates of violence “seven to eight times” higher than other jail systems, according to the monitor.
Efforts to restore order had “faltered and, in some cases regressed” since the crisis drew national attention in September, it found.
In the last month, there have been three deaths in the facility. Earlier this week, a 52-year-old detainee, Herman Diaz, reportedly choked to death because there were no correction officers in his unit to render aid.
Molina, meanwhile, said that the agency had managed to bring back 1,300 staff members, reducing the absence rate to 19%. He said that progress had been achieved through a “focus on staff wellness and organizational health which have been overlooked for far too long.”
But members of the City Council said they distrusted the commissioner’s figures, and were enraged by the lack of answers provided in response to questions about how many posts were unmanned, the length of wait times for medical appointments, and how many staff were being investigated for sick leave abuse and going AWOL.
“He threw out a percentage, but was entirely lacking the nuts and bolts numbers that would back any of that up,” said Councilmember Tiffany Caban, whose Queens district includes Rikers Island.
Members of the Board of Correction, the jail oversight board, have also complained in recent months that the new DOC leadership is withholding key data about its correctional operations.
The allegation was echoed in last week’s federal monitor report, which said that it was “incredibly disappointed to report that it has lost confidence that it has access to all of the relevant and reliable information necessary to perform its duties.”
Councilmember Chi Ossé, who represents Brooklyn, struck an equally vexed tone as he questioned the jail’s leaders on Monday.
“How do we in the City Council vote in good faith to increase the DOC budget when you don't have answers that prove the efficacy of the programs that you want to continue doing?”
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Jake Offenhartz
Jake Offenhartz is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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