New correction commissioner promises to work better with oversight board
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New Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie promised members of the Board of Correction that she and her leadership team would be more transparent and cooperative than former DOC Commissioner Louis Molina was during his two years in office. Screenshot via BOC
By Jacob Kaye
Top officials at the city’s Department of Correction and its independent, citizen watchdog group the Board of Correction took the tenants of the new year to heart on Wednesday, promising to have a more collaborative and less confrontational 2024 than they did 2023.
At the board’s first oversight meeting of the year, BOC Chair Dwayne Sampson, an appointee of Mayor Eric Adams who clashed with members of his own board several times last year, said that he would recommit himself to developing the board and using it to hold the DOC to account – the board’s main function is to create and enforce a set of minimum standards, a number of which have been ignored by the Adams administration since the mayor took office two years ago.
In that same vein, new DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, who assumed the role after the promotion of former DOC head Louis Molina in December, made her first appearance before the BOC on Wednesday, and promised a new era of transparency and cooperation.
“I recognize a positive working relationship with the board is a key aspect of this work,” Maginley-Liddie told the board toward the start of the public hearing. “I remain committed to ensuring that the BOC minimum standards are upheld and transparency is maintained.”
“As this board is aware, the department's issues are complex and I look forward to a partnership with the Board of Correction focused on thoughtful, meaningful and expeditious reforms,” she added.
The sentiment from Maginley-Liddie marks a sharp break from the posture Molina took toward the board, who successfully sued Molina and the DOC last year over the former commissioner’s revocation of one of the board’s oversight tools.
Like his relationship with virtually all oversight bodies, Molina’s relationship with the board deteriorated over the 22 months he was in office.
In 2022, Molina, who now serves as the assistant deputy mayor for public safety, 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.
But 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 the board’s final meeting of the year in November, 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.
Maginley-Liddie appeared keen to reverse that trend on Wednesday, appearing before the board the first opportunity she got and claiming that she was aligned with the board on its efforts to institute reforms at the failed jail complex on Rikers Island.
“If I didn't think we could create a safe and humane environment for both staff and everyone in our care, I would not be here today,” the new commissioner said. “I look forward to working with the entire board of correction to our shared priorities and reforms.”
Wednesday’s meeting was one of the least contentious in months, if not years. Even as the BOC and department discussed the agency’s alleged failure to provide laundry service to detainees, the mood remained cordial.
Nonetheless, future tensions could await the BOC and DOC.
Dating back to the tail end of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, an executive order has been in place suspending a number of the board’s minimum standards. Citing an ongoing crises in Rikers, the mayor and DOC have suspended a number of rules, including one involving 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 is the detainees’ right to use the law library. The executive order also allows for detainees to be chained to desks as a form of restraint, a practice that was otherwise 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.
Whether or not that executive order remains in place throughout the entirety of 2024 remains to be seen.
Though a majority of the BOC’s board members have called for the mayor to put an end to the executive order, the mayor hasn’t gotten much pushback from Sampson, the board’s chair.
On Wednesday, Sampson said he had “a strong commitment to really move the needle forward on my behalf in this new year.”
That commitment comes after he got into a number of public spats and power struggles with members of the BOC in 2023.
Sampson, who had no previous experience in corrections, attempted at one point last year to unilaterally install his choice of executive director. His attempt was thwarted by a group of more criminal justice-minded board members who called an emergency meeting, which was not attended by Sampson or any of the mayor’s other appointees, and installed Jasmine Georges-Yilla as their acting executive director – Georges-Yilla would go on to be named the permanent executive director later in the year.
Sampson’s attempt at installing an executive director came weeks after he removed board members Bobby Cohen and Jacqueline Sherman from the subcommittee charged with investigating deaths in the city’s jails. Both Cohen and Sherman are among the most harsh critics of the DOC on the board. Sampson, who was the sole decision maker behind Cohen and Sherman’s removal, replaced them with Joseph Ramos and Jacqueline Pitts, both of whom were appointed by Adams. Despite a decade-high 19 deaths in DOC custody in 2022 and nine in 2023, the BOC’s death committee issued only two reports last year.
