Molina bids farewell to oversight board he largely ignored
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Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina appeared before the Board of Correction for one final time on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023. Screenshot via BOC
By Jacob Kaye
Louis Molina, for the last time, appeared before the Board of Correction as the head of the Department of Correction on Tuesday. It was only the third time this year that Molina gave on the record testimony to the board charged with providing oversight to the troubled corrections agency, which in recent months has inched closer and closer to being stripped of its control of Rikers Island.
Despite at times having an adversarial relationship with some of the board’s members, Molina’s final appearance before the BOC was relatively muted.
He received a thank you from board chair Dwayne Sampson, who, like Molina, was appointed to the role by Mayor Eric Adams, and who has been accused by advocates of failing to hold the DOC to account. Molina even received well wishes from Robert Cohen, a board member who proved to be one of Molina’s harshest critics during his nearly two years in office.
“I am proud to have been in this role over the last 22 months,” Molina told the BOC at the start of the oversight hearing. “I'm sure not everything I did was pleasing, but I can assure you that it came from a good place.”
Despite the niceties, the agenda for Tuesday’s agenda included discussions around a number of initiatives that Molina and the board have quibbled over since he first took office.
Like his relationship with the federal monitor keeping track of the conditions on Rikers Island on behalf of the judge considering a federal takeover of the jail, Molina’s relationship with the board has deteriorated over the past 22 months.
In 2022, Molina attended and testified at each of the first six meetings the board held. He was absent from both the September and October 2022 meetings – which at least one board member expressed their disappointment in – but returned for the board’s final meeting of the year in November.
The tensions between Molina and the board began immediately in 2023.
In January, Molina revoked the board’s remote access to surveillance video on Rikers Island, a decision that eventually led to the resignation of the BOC’s former executive director, Amanda Masters. In August, the BOC successfully sued the DOC and had its access to the remote video restored.
But throughout much of the year, Molina mostly decided to stay away from BOC meetings.
In 2023, Molina appeared before the board to give testimony on the record only twice before Tuesday’s hearing, which marked his third appearance – Molina was present and gave testimony at the board’s July hearing, but because the board was unable to reach a quorum, the meeting was unofficial.
In all, Molina attended only 10 of the 16 meetings the board held since he took office.
Though the board sent a letter to Molina demanding he appear before them after he missed last month’s meeting, as reported by THE CITY, his frequent absences did not come up at Tuesday’s meeting.
Neither did questions about the future of the DOC’s leadership.
Earlier this month, the mayor announced that Molina would be promoted to serve as the newly-created assistant deputy mayor for public safety, serving as the second-in-charge to Deputy Mayor Phil Banks, who currently oversees the DOC on behalf of the Adams administration.
Though the administration has yet to give a specific date for Molina’s departure, he is expected to move to City Hall at some point this month.
While there wasn’t much explicit reflection on his time in office during this week’s BOC meeting, the commissioner was asked at one point about what he believes the three biggest challenges currently facing the DOC are.
In response, Molina pointed the finger at those outside the corrections department. To start, Molina called on the city to increase its mental health services so that those who need treatment are not instead put into the criminal justice system. Next, he called for more financial support for district attorneys offices so that they can prosecute cases at a quicker clip. Lastly, he called on the court system to process cases faster so that detainees are not awaiting the resolution of their cases on Rikers Island for as a long as they currently are – as of October, over 1,330 detainees had been held in the city’s jail for over a year, according to DOC data.
But much of Tuesday’s meeting was focused on the inertia seen in the DOC during Molina’s tenure.
Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina largely ignored the Board of Correction during his time in office, missing a little less than half of the meetings they held during his tenure. Screenshot via BOC
Throughout the entirety of Molina’s leadership, a number of the board’s minimum standards – or a set of rules and regulations intended to keep detainees and staff safe – have been suspended. Dating back to the final months of the de Blasio administration, the mayor has each week passed an executive order suspending the rules, citing the ongoing crisis in the jails.
Creating and maintaining the minimum standards is the main function of the BOC and their suspension has frustrated a number of board members over the past two years.
One of the rules suspended in the executive order involves involuntary lock-in. Prior to the order, incarcerated people could not be involuntarily locked in their cell unless it was during sleeping hours, if the incarcerated population was being counted, or if “facility business...can only be carried out while people are locked in,” the BOC minimum standards state. That provision has been suspended for over two years.
Also suspended was the detainees’ right to use the law library. The executive order also allowed for detainees to be chained to desks as a form of restraint, a practice that was banned in 2021.
The executive order, which Adams has signed every week since taking office, also continues the delay of the Risk Management Accountability System, an alternative to solitary confinement that the board spent years developing but that has yet to be implemented.
When asked about RMAS’ status on Tuesday, Molina blamed Steve J. Martin, the federal monitor, for the lack of its implementation. Last year, Martin said in a report that he believed the DOC was not capable of enacting the alternative to solitary confinement in a way that would have been safe for detainees or staff members. The monitor also said that he believed the system wouldn’t do enough to correct violent behavior among detainees.
“This is one of the things I really wanted us to be able to operationalize out the gate because I know how important RMAS was to this body,” Molina said on Tuesday. “The federal monitor did not approve the RMAS rules and his remarks to me were that he felt that it was not in alignment with best correctional practices and felt that it was not the appropriate way to manage individuals that are committing acts of violence to either persons in custody or to staff.”
Molina received no further questions from board members about RMAS after making his remarks.
One of the few moments of tension on Tuesday came after the BOC began to question Molina about the alleged ongoing need for the passage of the executive orders. The BOC has regularly asked that Molina and the mayor put an end to the executive order and allow the minimum standards to again be put in place.
“You often said that you liked these orders because it makes your job easier,” Cohen said to Molina on Tuesday. “I don't think that the fact that it's easier for you to do stuff is a reason to not follow board rules – obviously it would be easier for you to do anything if you had no other rules to do.”
In response, Molina claimed that the suspension of the rules was necessary to implement the “action plan” the DOC created to stave off a federal takeover of the jail – the federal monitor has said in recent reports that over a year after its implementation, the action plan has largely been unsuccessful in reducing violence on Rikers Island.
He also told the BOC to bring questions about the executive orders to the mayor’s office, where he’ll soon be working.
“I would recommend that the board engage with City Hall in conversations about these mayoral executive office orders,” Molina said. “As I transition into my new role, maybe we could talk about that when I get there.”
