Less than two weeks after a federal monitor slammed the Department of Correction with a damning report detailing worsening conditions on Rikers Island and in city jails, Commissioner Louis Molina snubbed the jails’ oversight board at its regular meeting – for the second time in a row.
The city watchdog in charge of Rikers meets almost every month to discuss the performance and conditions of troubled city jails with the department and leaders in charge of running them.
But in an unexpected move, not a single Department of Correction jails official showed up to the Board of Correction meeting on Tuesday. Molina did not attend September's meeting, either, although his staff did.
Dwayne Sampson, who chairs the Board of Correction, told attendees as the meeting began that the department was not coming. He said department officials told him they needed to prepare for a Oct. 18 City Council Criminal Justice committee meeting, which had been on the calendar for about two weeks.
A spokesperson for the Department of Correction declined further comment.
“I was surprised,” said Sampson, who found out about an hour before the meeting.
The meeting's attendees – including other board members, members of the press, defense attorneys, prison advocates, correction officers and Correctional Health Services representatives — were visibly surprised when they were told that the correction officials would not attend.
Michael Klinger, a jail services attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services, told Gothamist the board deserved answers from the department about the recent reports of worsening conditions.
“We were looking forward to getting critical information on a number of urgent concerns,” he said.
He said he and his colleagues were planning to ask correction officials about instances that included detainees being chained to desks for four hours at a time; being locked in their cells around the clock for days; and losing education and job training support.
On the meeting agenda, the Department of Correction had been set to update the board on slashings and stabbings in certain housing units, a state of emergency in city jail facilities, and programming and education in jails. All of these matters were recently spotlighted in press reports and a disturbing federal monitor’s report filed on Oct. 8, which detailed worsening conditions at Rikers and other city jails.
Last week, a federal judge issued an urgent order for city officials and a federal monitor to meet and make a new plan for improvements at city jails by Oct. 18. Department spokesperson Frank Dwyer said officials have met with the monitor.
