“The people incarcerated at Rikers are at a grave risk of immediate harm.” This declaration by Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain, tasked with deciding whether or not to strip control of Rikers Island from New York City, is an affirmation of a truth groups like Freedom Agenda have long known to be self-evident: Rikers Island is beyond repair.
It’s also an indictment of New York City Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina, whose tenure has accelerated Rikers’s collapse and has been marked by death, institutional violence, extreme secrecy and regressive measures. At least 28 people have died on Molina’s watch since he assumed his role in January 2022. These 28 people were not convicted but were given death sentences due to the negligence of our city’s leaders.
Molina’s utter, abject failure was not always predictable. As a program provider at Rikers, I was enthusiastic upon the news that Mayor Adams had appointed Molina. In 2019, as faculty at Manhattanville College, I facilitated programs at the Westchester Jail — the state’s second largest — where Molina was the deputy commissioner, and part of the team that brought the jail out of federal oversight.
Facilitating an inside-out college program, I witnessed Molina’s programming-oriented approach. He attended certificate ceremonies and frequently checked in with us while the course was in progress. He seemed genuinely engaged and interested. At the onset of COVID, Rikers descended into unmitigated chaos and violence. But the Westchester Jail quickly adapted and continued its approach to programs for people in custody.
So what has gone so horribly wrong in his new job?
Molina and I crossed paths again in 2022, this time on Rikers Island where I spent four years leading writing workshops. It was clear that Molina had left his programming-first mindset far behind.
Soon after his appointment to lead the DOC, my Rikers programs faced constant cancellations due to deep understaffing. I was also forced to discontinue the tablet-based portion of the workshops without warning when the DOC abruptly switched vendors and took everyone’s tablets for the rest of the year. When one partner program expressed dismay with this decision at a time when programs and detained people so depended on them, their contract was terminated with no reason given.
While Molina could focus on expanding compassionate treatment of the people on Rikers while facilitating its timely closure by 2027, he’s chosen instead to make it even more brutal and oppressive, and less transparent.
Two factors stick out when considering Molina’s transition from a reform-oriented administrator to an apologist for the country’s most dysfunctional jail system: an unyielding desire to appease groups such as the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association (COBA), and a questionable alignment with pro-carceral conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute. Both groups have influenced Molina’s boss Mayor Adams’ policy on Rikers, and it’s clear their grip has gotten to him as well.
Molina and Adams have gone all-in on the Manhattan Institute, best known for fomenting backlash to bail reform and encouraging stop-and-frisk and broken windows policing, all of which have driven the crisis on Rikers. This is the same group Molina joined for a fireside chat dubiously titled “Rescuing Rikers”, in which he suggested the commitment to close Rikers accelerated its collapse. This unfounded statement is indicative of his broader refusal to hold accountable the true culprit: COBA.
COBA’s influence in preventing officer accountability and promoting mass incarceration is well-documented, as is their connection to Eric Adams’ campaign. They fueled the staffing crisis during the pandemic by vehemently protecting the abuse of unlimited sick leave, for which some of the most egregious instances are now warranting criminal charges. Molina and Adams unrelentingly seek to appease COBA, including firing the chief investigator, dismissing cases of officer misconduct en masse, and ignoring oversight from the Board of Correction.
At his Manhattan Institute talk, Molina rightly acknowledged that advocates, uniformed officers, and wardens worked together in Westchester County to advance a mission-based approach. However, it seems that either Molina made a critical miscalculation that COBA could be reasoned with, or he knew when appointed that he would have to play ball with them.
COBA presents itself as officers’ only shield against a twofold threat: City governance and people in their custody. They promote an “us vs. them” mentality that makes positive change impossible.
Louis Molina has made a terrible choice to follow the mayor and defend Rikers by trying to hide its abuses rather than expediting its closure and rooting out corruption. By doing so, he has gone from a well-respected reformer to become part of this stain on our city.
Proctor is founding facilitator at Re/Creation, an organizational partner in the Campaign to Close Rikers.
