On any given day, upwards of 1,000 New York City Correction Officers do not report to work. This statistic is reprehensible and embarrassing, and yet, because fewer are out than were before, the administration claims it as a victory while New Yorkers continue to die on Rikers.
If the mayor and the correction commissioner are serious about change and determined to avoid a federal receivership, they have a troubling way of showing it. As the City Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice holds its executive budget hearing for the Department of Correction this afternoon, the court is evaluating whether this administration is capable of delivering critical and urgent harm reduction to city jails without external oversight.
This consideration also comes in the wake of the damning March 16, special report of the Nunez Independent Federal Monitor, which chronicled indefensible human rights abuses and a failure by the department to successfully carry out its mandated duty. In the weeks following the report’s release, testimony shared with the City Council revealed the extent of the department’s egregious mismanagement of its staff and the associated grave, sometimes deadly, consequences. As a result, New York City is running the nation’s most expensive correction system, which routinely fails to provide access to medical care, transportation to scheduled court appearances, basic needs like food and hygiene, and safety to the people in its custody.
The department is unable to answer simple questions regarding its staff. To date, testimony has been far too vague and the data systematically nonexistent. Oversight reports reveal there are at once too many correction officers and too few: Full tactical teams respond to minor altercations while entire housing units go unstaffed for hours. It is abundantly clear the department does not have even a tentative grasp on its staff, let alone the scale of the ongoing staffing crisis, and yet, astoundingly, the administration has proposed increasing the overall headcount by 578 officers at an additional cost of $63 million to taxpayers.
The budget proposal to increase headcount shows the department is not serious about systemic transformation, nor does it have any understanding of its already bloated budget. The mayor entered office touting fiscal responsibility. Five months later, cautious optimism for a budget focused on recovery is lost, subverted by threats of austerity. Critical city agencies and services have suffered hiring freezes, headcount reductions and resource restrictions, but the same accountability has not been applied to the Department of Correction. While New Yorkers take to the steps of City Hall day in and day out to rally for programs and services with a proven record of success, from smaller class sizes to adequate waste management to supportive housing, the Department of Correction remains free from restraint. Unlike many city agencies at present, Correction is not under a hiring freeze.
Concerns about having the right staff in place at the department can be addressed without increasing headcount, and in fact, could even be addressed while reducing headcount. With twice as many staff per incarcerated person as there were eight years ago, attrition would move the department closer to a reasonable staff ratio and operations budget. The problems of unstaffed units and triple shifts, while great concerns, will not be solved with thousands more guards if there is no system to obligate them to come to work and work directly with incarcerated people.
This is not the first time an administration has proposed an increase to the department’s headcount. In fact, shortly after the Nunez Independent Federal Monitor began publishing regular reports on conditions in New York City jails in May of 2016, then-Mayor de Blasio drastically increased headcount in an effort to stymie the crisis at Rikers Island. Even a cursory review of the Monitor’s reports in the six years since would prove this attempted solution unsuccessful. To propose yet another increase in headcount to solve the same (though considerably worsened) problem without evidence of success is both brazen and irresponsible.
Further, the department’s Action Plan developed in response to the monitor’s recommendations set forth in the March 16 Special Report, while extensive in its proposed reforms to staff management, discipline and accountability, does not include a recommendation to increase the department’s budgeted headcount at all, let alone call for an additional 578 officers as the mayor’s executive budget proposes. Given the commissioner and the Department clearly do not believe the headcount increase is necessary to achieve reform, then surely they agree it would be irresponsible to authorize the expense.
We acknowledge the communication and transparency the department has reportedly shown the monitoring team in recent months. The fact remains, as the Monitor writes,”there is simply no extant mechanism that can achieve immediate reform.” In order to successfully avoid a receivership, the department must devote significant and sustained effort toward carrying out the initiatives, practices, and reforms outlined in the Action Plan. Only then will this crisis abate.
Rivera is the New York City Council Member representing Murray Hill to the Lower East Side and chair of the Committee on Criminal Justice. Mack is a survivor of Rikers and co-director from Freedom Agenda, one of the organizations leading the campaign to close Rikers.
