Jail boss blames courts for rising Rikers population
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Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina blamed Rikers Island’s ballooning population on slow downs in the court system during a Board of Correction meeting on Tuesday, July 18, 2023. File photo via City Council/Flickr
By Jacob Kaye
The city has until 2027 to cut the population on Rikers Island by nearly half.
On any given day, there are around 6,000 detainees, a majority of whom have yet to be convicted of a crime, being held in the city’s notorious jail complex. That’s been the case for about the past year. But the four borough-based jails expected to replace Rikers Island when it closes as a jail facility in 2027 will only be able to hold a combined 3,300 detainees, a target that is only growing further and further from reality.
On Tuesday, Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina, who has cast doubt on the city’s legally-mandated plan to close Rikers in four years, said that he expects the jail complex to hold 7,000 New Yorkers on average each day by next summer.
But despite facing criticism over his management of the city’s jails from federal judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, criminal justice advocates, lawmakers and court-appointed monitors, Molina on Tuesday blamed Rikers’ population issues on the state’s court system.
“The court process is what's causing [the delay in outflow],” Molina said during an oversight meeting before the Board of Correction on Tuesday afternoon.
“The outflow of persons that are in temporary detention is not happening at a pace that's exceeding the inflow of bodies coming in,” the embattled commissioner told board members. “It’s a flow through problem.”
Molina pointed specifically to Rikers detainees who have been held on the island for one or more years.
As of last week, around 760 New Yorkers had been held in the jail complex for anywhere between one and two years, according to the DOC.
Around 500 incarcerated individuals had been held for more than 2 years, DOC data shows.
In total, there are around 1,240 people who have been detained pretrial on Rikers Island for more than a year – the longest sentence a convicted New Yorker can serve on Rikers Island is one year.
“As individuals continue to come into the system, they're not exiting it in a timely manner,” Molina said.
When asked if there were any actions the Department of Correction could take toward reducing the Rikers population, Molina again deflected to the judiciary.
“This is in the hands of the state courts,” he added.
Lucian Chalfen, a spokesperson for the Office of Court Administration, pushed back on the idea that the jail’s growing population and its increase in length of stays was a direct result of a lack of movement in the courts.
However, rather than put the blame back on the DOC, which has had issues getting detainees to their court dates, causing delays in cases, Chalfen said district attorney’s offices and defense attorneys are to blame.
“To the extent that DOC indicated that the courts are causing delays because it takes too long to bring these cases to resolution, the court commences trials when both sides - prosecution and defense – are ready for trial,” Chalfen said.
“Judges are often waiting to try any case that is ready and the courts do not turn away cases where both sides are ready to go,” he added. “Cases are delayed because either the prosecution or the defense is contending that they are not ready to begin the trial.”
A spokesperson for the Queens district attorney's office said, “We have every incentive to process cases as expeditiously as possible, but the goal ultimately is to ensure that justice is served.”
The DA’s spokesperson also cited recent changes to the state’s discovery laws as a reason for stalled cases.
Prolonged stays on Rikers Island can have a negative impact on nearly everyone involved in the case – the victim, their family, the accused and the accused’s family.
Marcia Bryson, a Cambria Heights mother, saw her son held pre-trial on Rikers Island for five years before his case was resolved – her son, 42-year-old Neville Brown, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years in prison in January for a series of fatal shootings that took place in 2018.
“[It] is exhausting – mental, physical and financial exhaustion,” Bryson told the Eagle last year, before Brown’s case came to its conclusion.
In total, Bryson estimates she spent around $100,000 on her son and his case since his arrest in 2018. While a bulk of the money has gone to private attorneys, she’s also spent thousands of dollars on helping her son live as well as he could inside a jail that is notorious for its poor conditions. To pay for it all, Bryson said she had to go into debt and forgo her planned retirement.
Regardless of who or what is to blame for Rikers’ rising population, the city is trending in the wrong direction as Rikers’ 2027 closure, which Mayor Eric Adams has called into question, draws closer.
There are a number of population reduction tools available to city officials that are currently being underutilized or not used at all.
Among them is the Local Conditional Release Commission, a board made up of five members that is supposed to screen potential candidates serving up to a year in Rikers for early release.
Despite being created in 2020, the board has yet to hear a single case.
That’s because it has yet to be staffed by the City Council and the mayor. The commission’s first members – the group is expected to have five appointed members – were confirmed by the City Council in December. However, the mayor has yet to make an appointment to the commission.
The commission, which falls under the purview of the Department of Probation, could potentially grant the release of around 100 detainees serving short sentences in the city’s jail per year, according to a DOP official.
Juanita Holmes, who was recently named commissioner of the Department of Probation, told the Eagle last month that she expects the final slots on the commission to be filled by the end of the summer and for the commission to be up and running and hearing cases by September.
“It's definitely moving forward,” Holmes said. “Our goal was to have this up and hopefully this commission in place by the end of summer.”
Advocates have also alleged that the city has underutilized the 6-A Early Release program, which also allows the DOC to release individuals before the completion of their sentence.
Under both the 6-A Early Release program and the Local Conditional Release Commission, detainees must first meet a narrow set of standards before being considered for or ultimately granted release.
The nonprofit news outlet THE CITY reported this week that another group tasked with coming up with solutions to the jail’s population issues has been relatively inactive.
Shortly after Adams took office, he formed a Rikers Island task force that was told to come up with a number of solutions to the jail’s numerous problems, including its population.
However, the task force has yet to issue a single report since being formed and its co-chair, Chief Counsel Brandan McGuire, is soon to leave both the administration and the task force. His replacement on the task force has not been identified, THE CITY reported.
After declining for several years, Rikers’ population began to see an uptick in 2020. In April 2020, the jail saw an average daily population of around 4,000. By the end of the year, its average daily population had increased to 4,800.
When Adams first took office, the jail’s average daily population was around 5,300. In June, there were 6,044 people in the jail per day on average, the highest average population since December 2019.
