DOC a no-show at monthly oversight hearing
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Robert Cohen, a long-time member of the Board of Correction, said that he was disappointed that Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina did not show up to the board’s monthly oversight hearing on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022. Screenshot via BOC/YouTube
By Jacob Kaye
For the 42nd time, Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday re-issued Executive Orders 238 and 279, which he’s issued once a week since first taking office in January.
The executive orders, which began under former Mayor Bill de Blasio in September 2021, suspends a set of minimum standards issued by the Department of Correction’s oversight body, the Board of Correction. By eliminating the standards, the DOC is no longer required to house young adults and adults in separate housing units on Rikers Island. It’s also able to skirt rules surrounding involuntary lock in and the amount of time that people spend inside a cell.
On Tuesday, members of the board said they’d hoped to ask DOC leadership, including Commissioner Louis Molina, what actions were being taken to make the executive orders no longer a necessity.
However, Molina wasn’t there, and neither was a single member of the DOC’s leadership team. It was the second meeting in a row the commissioner had missed.
“It's unusual,” said board member Robert Cohen. “I've been on the board for 13 years and a commissioner has never missed two meetings in a row without a reason.”
“I would ask him, ‘What does it take – what will it take to end the emergency executive order?” Cohen added. “I've only seen every five days, these orders renewed, I've seen no progress in really responding to the crisis and staffing on the island.”
A number of board members on Tuesday chastised the department for being unable to answer questions about the suspension of the rules – board members have, in several previous meetings, routinely pushed back against the use of executive orders to suspend the rules.
“These are the minimum standards that we, as a city, determined to be the least that we do in terms of humanity on behalf of those that we care about,” said board member Felipe Franco. “And it’s sad that we have to be talking about just trying to understand why we're not meeting those minimum standards.”
Tuesday’s Board of Correction meeting was the second-to-last official meeting of the year, and the 10th meeting held since Molina first took over the struggling city agency.
In a statement to the Eagle, a DOC spokesperson said Molina and the members of the agency’s leadership team were busy meeting with the federal monitor on Tuesday. The monitor, who was appointed to track conditions on Rikers Island in 2015, co-created an “action plan” with the DOC earlier this year aimed at improving conditions in the jail complex.
“The Department notified the Board that the Commissioner and his executive team would not be attending this month’s Board of Correction meeting due to the Federal Monitor's visit,” the spokesperson said. “However, the Commissioner has offered to meet with the Board this afternoon after the public meeting, or tomorrow afternoon, to discuss the items included on the BOC’s meeting agenda.”
“We will continue to keep the Board apprised of Departmental updates, and we remain committed to improving our jails with transparency and accountability,” the spokesperson added.
Tuesday’s meeting came days after the DOC had requested that the BOC grant them the ability to hold detainees accused of perpetuating violence in the jail complex for 17 hours in a cell per day in the George R. Vierno Center – up from the 10 hours the DOC is currently allowed to hold the detainees. DOC leadership said staffing issues and an increase in violent incidents necessitated the move.
The request, which was made last week, caused an uproar among a number of criminal justice advocacy groups and lawmakers. Though the request was pulled by the DOC only days later, BOC members said this week that they still needed answers as to why DOC leadership thought the request was ever necessary.
“Being locked in a cell has clinical consequences – of loneliness and suicidality,” Cohen said. “Too many people have died because they couldn't stand it and they killed themselves on Rikers over the past two years. And this will make it worse.”
Sixteen people have died while either in DOC custody or just after being granted compassionate release from the department’s custody this year. That matches the death toll from last year, which itself was an eight year high. A number of the combined 32 deaths have been suspected suicides.
Cohen said that the DOC has made a similar request to increase the lock down time in the past.
“The department attempted to do the same thing that it’s trying to do now…and it was very difficult and it led to a tremendous amount of violence and it was not successful,” he said. “But it's not something you can just say and do if you do not do not have sufficient staff.”
“You will be essentially initiating a gang war into GRVC, and that's what happened,” he added.
According to the DOC, there have been 76 stabbing and slashing incidents since June 1 in the jail facility.
Last summer, the DOC began to experience a major staffing crisis, with hundreds of officers calling out sick or going AWOL on any given day. Though the numbers of officers out sick has decreased in 2022, so have the overall number of uniformed officers on the DOC’s payroll.
At the start of the year, there were nearly 7,700 correctional officers on staff. There were around 7,000 on staff as of August. In January of 2021, there were around 8,800 correctional officers working for the DOC, according to department data.
Next month, DOC leadership will appear before federal Judge Laura T. Swain and attempt to prove to her that their action plan has not only been enacted but that it’s been successful in improving conditions in the jail.
Though a number of elected officials making unannounced visits to Rikers Island in recent months have said that they’ve observed some improved conditions, other conditions, which were previously identified as troublesome in the action plan, appear to have persisted.
Earlier this week, the Legal Aid Society and the Board of Correction accused correctional staffers of tampering with an internal database that tracks the amount of time a detainee is held in an intake cell, or the cells where people are held when first entering Rikers Island. The intake cells were the subject of intense scrutiny over the past year after reports and photos of the crowded and dirty cells surfaced.
A previous court order demanded the DOC keep detainees in the cells for no longer than 24 hours. However, DOC staff on at least 16 occasions appeared to have changed the time a person entered into the cell as they approached their 24th hour in it.
Additionally, slashings and stabbings have increased by over 30 percent this year when compared to 2021, according to DOC data. The department is also still contending its staffing crisis and a decline in its correctional officer ranks, which has resulted in the deaths of several detainees, according to a report from the Board of Correction. There’s also the high number of deaths on the island.
Should Swain feel the DOC has not improved conditions on Rikers Island – which is set to close in 2027 – she could institute a federal receivership, a legal action that both Molina and Mayor Eric Adams have railed against.
A receivership is a vague judicial action and its parameters are largely set by the judge that implements it. A receivership could result in the complete takeover of the jail by a federal authority or it could result in more of a collaborative effort to run the jail between a federal authority and the DOC.
Last week, City Comptroller Brad Lander became the highest-ranking city official to call on Swain to implement a receivership.
