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Department of Correction honchos are expected to be grilled during a City Council hearing Wednesday on violence and poor management plaguing Rikers Island.
Councilwoman Carlina Rivera said she and other members of the criminal justice committee, which she chairs, will demand the DOC explain its horrific showing in the latest scathing report by Steve J. Martin, a federal monitor overseeing the agency’s court-ordered reform efforts.
“The atrocities as detailed through data and horrific anecdotes confirm what advocates have been telling us for years: the conditions in New York City jails are far beyond the realm of normal and, to quote the monitoring team, ‘defy sound correctional practice,’” the Manhattan Democrat said in a statement.
The 78-page report, released last week, was the first issued by Martin since Mayor Eric Adams took office this year.
The rate of violence in city jails is “seven to eight times higher than those observed in other correctional systems,” according to the report, which blames massive staff shortages and correction officers skipping work.
After the city’s jail system saw 16 detainees die in custody last year — the most since 2013 — this year is already on another deadly pace. A Rikers Island inmate died Friday — the second death at the troubled city jail system in as many days and the third in 2022, officials said.
Martin questioned the new leadership of DOC Commissioner Louis Molina, who took over the department in January.
“The department is trapped in a state of persistent dysfunctionality, where even the first step to improve practice is undercut by the absence of elementary skills and the convolution of basic correctional practices and systems,” Martin noted.
DOC stymied Martin’s work by failing to turn over staffing data and snubbing other requests, the monitor alleged.
Rivera, whose committee Wednesday is holding a budget hearing on DOC’s $1.2 billion spending plan for next fiscal year, said she was “appalled” by the department’s lack of “transparency” — and said it won’t be “tolerated.”
Martin cited a December report by then-Comptroller Scott Stringer, which found the city spent a record $556,539 in fiscal year 2021 to house each detainee, or quadruple what it spent 10 years earlier.
Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officer’s Benevolent Association, ripped Martin’s report.
The monitor lacks “a fundamental understanding” that “use of force” incidents are up only because correction officers are routinely breaking up fights among detainees, the union president said.
Molina did not respond to questions directly about the report, but in a statement said “We must do better, and we can do better. We are moving forward as swiftly as possible to fix longstanding issues.”
Martin was tapped as a monitor after Manhattan federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain in October 2015 approved a landmark settlement in which the city committed to far-reaching reforms at Rikers Island to resolve claims of correction officers using excessive force.
He and his team have earned more than $10 million.
The union and other critics have questioned whether Martin and his team are only making the problems at city jails worse.
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