Mayor restores programming on Rikers months after cutting funding
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Mayor Eric Adams said his administration was putting $14 million toward programming for detainees on Rikers Island eight months after his administration ordered the Department of Correction to cut a $17 million contract with programming providers. File photo by Caroline Rubinstein-Willis/Mayoral Photography Office
By Jacob Kaye
The Adams administration late Monday announced that it planned to mostly restore nonprofit-provided programming for detainees on Rikers Island after the city attempted – and largely failed – to provide the programming itself following a budget cut ordered by the mayor last year.
As part of a multi-pronged announcement regarding the future of the troubled jail complex on Rikers Island this week, Mayor Eric Adams’ office said that City Hall would be putting $14 million to “enhance programing initiatives for people in custody.” The money will go toward contracts with nonprofit organizations that offer a range of services to detainees, a spokesperson for City Hall said.
The mayor’s announcement comes a little more than half a year after the Department of Correction cut a $17 million contract with five nonprofit organizations that provided programming and services on Rikers Island, the jail complex where over two dozen people have died since Adams took office.
The DOC, which was led at the time by former commissioner and now-Assistant Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Louis Molina, defended the austerity measure last May by claiming that the organizations’ programming wasn’t well attended and that the department could offer the same services just as effectively but at less of a cost to taxpayers.
That turned out not to be the case. During the first four months after the contract was severed, the number of group-based programming offered to detainees on Rikers Island dropped by 29 percent and one-on-one sessions dropped by over 30 percent when compared to the same period the year prior, the Eagle was the first to report.
According to a mayoral spokesperson, the new $14 million in funding for programming was allocated to the DOC following an audit done by the DOC’s program and community partnerships division that found that detainees’ need for programming and services were not being met.
Though City Hall did not call the $14 million an attempt to restore the cuts made to the DOC contracts in July 2023, all of the programming and services the new allotment will fund were previously offered by the service providers under the $17 million contract.
And while it’s not a full restoration of the cut made in July 2023, nonprofit providers said Tuesday that the funding will go a long way toward programming that they say improves safety both on and off Rikers Island.
“This is huge for this administration,” Stanley Richards, the CEO and president of Queens-based nonprofit The Fortune Society, told the Eagle. “I think this is in support of the [DOC] commissioner’s vision of bringing services back to reduce idleness and to increase connection to community services for those that are going to be released.”
Under the leadership of new Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, the department appears to have changed its position on its partnership with nonprofit service providers.
In the Mayor’s Management Report issued in January – which was the second month Maginley-Liddie was serving as commissioner – the agency admitted that it had been unable to provide services and programming at the rate that they were offered when the $17 million contract was in place.
In a statement issued on Monday, the commissioner noted the benefits of having robust programming on Rikers Island.
"Programs providing education, health and wellness, and transitional services are essential for improving the safety of our jails and creating better outcomes for those in our care and custody," Maginley-Liddie said in a statement. "Investments in programming can lead to reductions in violence, lower rates of recidivism, and pathways to higher education and employment,”
The mayor’s $14 million allocation announcement also comes around a week after the Eagle exclusively reported that Maginley-Liddie had asked two nonprofit organizations to return to work on Rikers Island free of charge. Those organizations, The Fortune Society and the Osborne Association, were two of the five groups working in the jail complex under the previous $17 million contract.
It’s unclear if The Fortune Society, Osborne or the other groups will return to work on Rikers as part of the new funding. It’s also unclear what the process will be for bringing service providers back onto the island or when they’ll be back – the city’s procurement processes can take anywhere from six to seven months, Richards said.
According to the mayor’s office, the $14 million allotment will go toward five different types of programming including trauma-informed programming, transition planning programming, substance misuse programming, supplemental education programming and transportation programming.
For the trauma-informed programming, the mayor’s office said the DOC will improve access to “trauma-informed care for people in custody through the creation of a social work, mental health, and creative arts therapies team that supports learning opportunities for graduate-level students.”
The programming is specifically targeted at the population of detainees diagnosed with mental health issues, which accounts for over half of those held on the island – around 20 percent of Rikers’ detained population has been diagnosed with a serious mental illness.
According to the mayor’s office, the programming will be available to sentenced individuals and detainees with special needs. Around 600 people will be eligible for the programming at any given time, with an average of 210 participants on any given day, according to the DOC.
The money going toward transition planning services will be used to pay for transition planners, who will be assigned to each general population housing area and at intake facilities. Those transition services were provided by the nonprofits under the contract severed last year, and are currently being provided by The Fortune Society at one facility on Rikers.
The department said that around 4,800 detainees and sentenced individuals will have access to the increased programming.
Substance misuse programming will be available to around 3,840 detainees, with an average of around 1,300 active participants on any given day. According to the DOC, around 4,260 incarcerated individuals on Rikers self-reported drug use.
Nonprofit providers will also offer basic literacy, numeracy, general education diploma preparation, and English Language Learner services and college readiness, as well as tutoring for people in custody. Around 3,360 detainees will be eligible for the programming at any given time and around 1,170 will be able to take part in the programming on any given day.
The funding will also be used to pay for transportation to help sentenced individuals get to community-based programming upon their discharge.
City Hall said at least 140 people will have access to the transportation services per year.
After cutting the $17 million contract last year at the direction of the mayor’s office, the DOC’s offering of programming to detainees dropped precipitously.
“We've seen a decrease in program offerings that will happen to people incarcerated and we've seen the population go up,” Richards said. “It was a decision that was made based on the leadership at the department, and I'm thankful now that we have leadership that's running DOC who values and understands the value of partnerships with nonprofit organizations.”
City Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who chairs the Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice, celebrated the new funding but said that the programming saga that has played out over the past eight months wasn’t necessary.
“While I welcome the $14 million partial restoration of funds for vital programming on Rikers, it is imperative to contract these programs to the experienced community-based providers who have the trust and credibility to deliver these services effectively,” Nurse said in a statement.
“The mayor’s decision to abruptly cut funding to expert non-profit providers in 2023 and run these programs in-house through the Department of Correction was disruptive to the critical rehabilitation work for detainees and the urgent goal of safely reducing the jail population,” she added.
