Commissioner Molina on the Rikers Action Plan

Matt Katz: It's the The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Matt Katz from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. Part of what I report on here at WNYC is Rikers island. If you listen to this station, watch local TV, or read the papers, you know that distressing news about New York's large jail complex has continued in 2022. Most notably, there have been eight deaths of inmates there this year.

Last week, the federal monitor, who oversees things at Rikers, issued a report that indicated some signs of improvement under the Adams' administration, but nonetheless came to a distressing conclusion, "The jails remain dangerous and unsafe and the conditions are volatile. While some progress has been made in addressing staff absenteeism and the conditions at RNDC, that's one of the HLs at Rikers, and the commissioner is in the process of overhauling the department's leadership structure, and the trials division is processing more disciplinary cases than ever before, the overall situation in the jails remains chaotic. Incidents involving serious harm and tragic fatalities are all too frequent." That's from the federal monitor at Rikers.

There is some good news for the Adams' administration. Its proposed action plan for reform at Rikers was just given a seal of approval by a federal judge. The judge delayed until at least November a decision on the thing that the mayor most vehemently opposes. That's federal takeover of Rikers. No federal takeover at Rikers for now. Listeners, are you on Rikers? Were you on Rikers? Do you have a loved one at Rikers? Do you represent anyone at Rikers? Give us a call. Do you have faith in the action plan that the city is implementing? Do you want to see a federal takeover? The number to call, 212-433-WNYC, that's 212-433-9692.

Instead of a takeover, all eyes turn to our next guest, who has been given at least a few more months to stop the humanitarian crisis at the facility, even as an increasing number of stakeholders call for his power to be replaced by a federal receiver through this takeover proposal. Joining me now is the commissioner of the New York City Department of Corrections, Louis Molina. Commissioner Molina, good morning. We appreciate you coming on to give us an update on Rikers.

Commissioner Molina: Good morning, Matt. Thank you for having me on.

Matt Katz: A lot of the issues I've learned at Rikers stem from a staffing crisis. I'd like to start there. Rikers has the highest ratio of staff to inmates of any big city jail in the country, but because of absences and other issues, there haven't been enough officers, in some cases to help dying inmates, or bring inmates to the infirmary, or break up deadly assaults. As of today, commissioner, are there currently enough staff to to have enough officers in every housing unit at Rikers? In other words are all the posts filled?

Commissioner Molina: Yes. What we do, one, is I'd like to say that over 1,400 offices have returned back to work since the height of last summer when we had a significant staffing crisis at the jail, where we saw about on average 110 housing units did not have staff on post. Where we are today compared to then is, on an average, we see ourselves, we might start off the tour or the day with maybe about 20 or so posts that are unstaffed. What we've done is we have an emergency operations center that redeploys staff to those posts that are working in non-detaining facing posts to make sure that those posts are staffed with officers on the floor.

We always have an officer in what's called our A post, which observes the housing unit, but it is also important for us to have floor officers. We redeploy offices to those posts as needed.

Matt Katz: At any given time, there will be both the A and, I guess, the B officer at every housing unit?

Commissioner Molina: Yes.

Matt Katz: You said that many people have come back from being out sick and that's been confirmed by the federal monitor. Federal monitor last week said that you've made progress in reducing the number of staff out sick. The total head count, from what I understand, is lower, so the proportion who are out sick on any given day actually increased 59% from 2020 until now. The city comptroller said that the proportion out sick or with line of duty absences is higher than the NYPD or FDNY. Why are there still a good proportion of officers out sick? Are these officers really sick?

Commissioner Molina: Yes. Based on medical professionals and doctors notes and things of that or members that might have been in the line of duty that are home recuperating, there's no indication that we have that the majority of people are not sick. When we do have individuals that identify that are not meeting our standard or are unwilling to do what we need them to do, then we have a disciplinary process.

I think that that speaks to the heart of the matter. You need to have a timely and meaningful discipline process in order to have accountability. That's even one of the provisions of the consent judgment. For too long, we have had no accountability in this agency over the last decade. Without any accountability and enforcement of the department policies, during the time of a pandemic, a lot of these weak systems were exacerbated, which led to a significant staffing crisis in the department.

We have done a lot to overcome that over the last six months. Like I've said, over 1,400 people have come back to work. That has allowed us to restart up family visitation. Our contract providers are coming back in to do programming. There's a lot of things that we're able to do now that could not have been done then, to include following basic security practices for corrections. We've done a lot of work to do tactical security operations, facilitated security operations, which, quite frankly, were abandoned over at least two years, which led to a lot of significant violence within our jail system.

Matt Katz: I want to go back first moment. You said accountability, is that accountability for officers who aren't doing their job appropriately? Is that what you're referring to?

Commissioner Molina: Yes, it's an accountability for both. One is, in a paramilitary organization or in a uniform workforce, you have to have accountability, and not only for the staff, but we'd also have to have accountability for the people that are in custody that are exerting violence on staff members, both uniform and non-uniform staff members, in order to make sure that people are following the standards within our jail system.

Now, we'll tell you that assault on staff have decreased calendar year to date over 30%. We have also closed out over 1,450 disciplinary cases calendar year to date. We, quite frankly, under the mayor Adams' administration have actually conducted more discipline calendar year to date than any year going back to 2002.

Matt Katz: Is discipline being firings or suspensions?

Commissioner Molina: There's a number of things. Some discipline cases may end in someone's suspension, some may end in some other loss of vacation days. There is on occasion where, unfortunately, we have to take action and terminate someone. We've had to do that as well.

Matt Katz: Have you terminated more people than prior administrations?

Commissioner Molina: Yes, we have. We have terminated more people than the last four commissioners combined.

Matt Katz: You mentioned of violence and the slashings and stabbings, just from what I read in the federal monitor report. Slashings and stabbings is a category of incidents at the DOC Tracks. From January to April of this year, there were 189 stabbings and slashings. There were 100 during the first four months of 2021, 48 during the first four months of 2016, which is actually when the consent judgment, which led to the federal monitor, went into place. Why are slashings and stabbings up? Are corrections officers that you know of bringing weapons into the jails? Is that part of the reason why people have the ability to slash or stab another inmate or an officer?

Commissioner Molina: Yes. What I'll tell you is, like I said earlier, tactical and facility search operations for contraband weapons were not done for over two years in this department. In addition to that, there was no infrastructure investment within the department because the construction budget was always underfunded. When the decision was made to close Rikers Island and move to a broad-based jail facility, really, the infrastructure on Rikers Island was just neglected.

What I will tell you is when we instituted our violence reduction plan, what we did see was a huge drop in slashing and stabbings. In May of this year versus May of last year was a big drop of about 44%. We continue to see decreases in June. For the month of June, comparing June of this year to June of last year, we saw a decrease of 3%.

We did see our biggest impact where we started off violence reduction plan rollout, which was at the Robin Endeavoring Center, which is where we have our young adults, our most volatile population to manage. What we saw there was in April of this year compared to April of last year, slashing and stabbings reduced 24%. In May, that reduction with 64%. In June, that reduction was 77%. Our violence plan is working. It is only six months into the administration and we're dealing with over a decade of neglect.

Matt Katz: Where are the weapons coming from?

Commissioner Molina: The majority of the weapons are being made from institutional neglect. It could be plexiglass, windows that are being broken and shards of those windows are being used, other infrastructure tools that are being used and being fashioned to be made as weapons as well. That's how the weapons are being made.

Matt Katz: Do COs bring in contraband, like weapons, and sell them to inmates?

Commissioner Molina: We have an access control procedure at every one of our facilities that everyone goes through to make sure that contraband is not being brought into the facility. What I can tell you is, on the very limited occasions where we have a staff member that may be introducing prison contraband, we do take swift and immediate action. We work with our sister agency, the Department of Investigations, to make sure that these individuals are held accountable, and we swiftly move to take disciplinary action that will lead to their termination.

Matt Katz: We have a question from a bunch of callers. Let's go to Wayne in Brooklyn. Hi, Wayne. Thanks for calling in. You're on with Commissioner Molina.

Wayne: Hi there. Hi, Matt. Thanks so much for taking my call. Good morning, Commissioner Molina.

Commissioner Molina: Good morning, Mr. Wayne.

Wayne: Good morning. As we're entering the heat of the summer, we know that the Rikers is known to be scorching hot, which often leads to increased violence and death. Particularly, on the heel of the RMAS program or the Risk Management Accountability System implementation being delayed, I'm curious to know how many units that house people in solitary confinement don't have air conditioning and what steps you are taking to ensure that all units have air conditioning going forward. Thank you.

Matt Katz: Thanks, Wayne.

Commissioner Molina: No, thank you for your question. First of all, we don't have anybody in solitary confinement here. We've ended punitive segregation a long time ago here in this department, and I'm real proud of that. As far as air conditioning goes, our facilities are very, very old, hence the borough-based jail plan. We're renovating many of our facilities to include the one in Manhattan, the one in Queens, and the one in Brooklyn.

We have had our facilities and maintenance crews along with the assistance of the Department of Design and Construction do a lot of construction in order to enable air conditioning within our facilities, so we do have facilities that have air conditioning. In addition to that, we also fans, we also have a heat plan that's on our website that the public can view, and we look to install more cooling mechanisms as the summer comes into play.

Matt Katz: Given the nature of the facilities and the age of the facilities, there will certainly be many detainees who do not have air conditioning in the summer?

Commissioner Molina: We do a lot of temperature checks to make sure that the temperature in our facilities are at an acceptable level. Where we don't have air conditioning, we are providing ice, cold water, we have fans in those areas, but we do try to shut down a lot of places where air conditioning wasn't accessible. For example, we recently just closed down OBCC. We didn't have any air conditioning within OBCC, it's a much older facility, but nobody is housed there right now.

Matt Katz: I want to follow up on one thing the last caller mentioned, that's the Risk Management and Accountability System. This was a plan to replace solitary confinement. It was supposed to go into place by July 1st, you had said that you were intending to put it into place by July 1st. That has not happened. Solitary confinement, of course, is meant to punish prisoners for infractions, but it's also viewed as a human rights violation.

This new system would've allowed inmates-- For those who aren't familiar with this, the new system, it would've allowed them more space to walk around and it would've created some sort of representation at disciplinary hearings for them. You said earlier, there is nobody held now in, whether you call it solitary confinement or administrative segregation. I want to confirm that there's nobody in such a situation at the moment, and then what the plan is moving forward with this Risk Management and Accountability System.

Commissioner Molina: Just to reconfirm, the department does not practice solitary confinement. We do have restrictive housing, and individuals in restrictive housing get a minimum of seven hours out-of-cell time. Those individuals that are in restrictive housing having, in many cases, committed a very violent act, either against another detainee or a member of staff.

As it relates to the Risk Management Accountability System, we are working with Dr. Jim Austin, who is a classification consultant with decades of experience, to ensure that as we move forward, we're housing people in the most humanely way as possible and making sure that we implement a restrictive housing plan, that it has sound correctional practices. We are going to still try to achieve a lot of the spirit of what was in the Risk Management Accountability System, even though it was not approved by the monitor.

For example, we've removed the restraint desks that were part of our restrictive housing plan level one, we've retrofitted a lot of houses in preparation for us moving to the RMAS system, we've trained hundreds of officers at a minimum of 35 hours in RMAS training, so that's really beneficial. We'll continue to work closely with the monitor to address issues raised in his status report and execute on our action plan. I remain committed to a restrictive housing model that creates the most humane conditions possible while also maintaining safety and holding those who commit violence in our jails accountable.

Matt Katz: Do you have a date for implementing the new system?

Commissioner Molina: We were prepared to do RMAS July 1st. As you know, that plan wasn't approved by the monitor. We do have a restrictive housing unit called ESH. What we're doing is we're evolving ESH to align a little bit with the Risk Management Accountability System, but we're doing it in consultation as we continue to roll this out with Dr. Austin as a consultant working with our deputy commissioner of classification and custody management.

Matt Katz: Let's go back to the phone lines. Mike in Brooklyn. Hi there, Mike.

Mike: Hey, how you doing?

Matt Katz: Doing good.

Mike: Look, I told your examiner I'm not going to talk about my experience some years ago because I have a family when I was there, but this guy Molina, and he knows who Boscio is too, guys in Rikers have cell phones, they have heroin, they have brand new sneakers every day. Your reporter is asking questions, but I wish he'd push. Where do you think that stuff's coming from? It's coming from his officers.

[inaudible 00:16:59] you can get anything in Rikers from a CO when they bother to show up for work for a price. Molina knows it and Boscio, he's the union dude, he knows it too. He knows it. I wish you and The New York Times would push on this, just push.

Matt Katz: Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. Thank you for calling, Mike. Commissioner, the contraband in Rikers is well-known. There was a Daily News story last week of people shooting YouTube videos inside Rikers, and they're doing drugs and they've got all kinds of things that you wouldn't expect someone to have in jail. There were issues with overdoses during the pandemic, and there were no visitors during that time and no mail during that time, or at least limited. That indicated to many that the corrections officers are smuggling contrabands, smuggling drugs into the facility. How much of an issue is that, that the workforce is somehow complicit in the violence and the disorder and the chaos at times at Rikers?

Commissioner Molina: What I'll tell you is, as it relates to overdose and things like that and contraband coming in, our intelligence bureau as well as our K9 units are intercepting contraband on a daily basis. A lot of that contraband does come through the mail. When it comes to opioid use, nationally, opioid use is on a rise. There were 69,000 deaths attributed to opioid overdose throughout the country. We know that what happens in our jails reflects a lot of what's happening in the communities. Jails are not immune to this, it's a public health crisis.

Like I stated earlier, we do have access control mechanisms in place so that persons are checked before going into our facilities, both for our uniform staff, our non-uniform staff, and other visitors. In the occasion where we do have an employee or a visitor or anyone bringing in contraband, then what we do is we do take swift action to deal with that issue.

Matt Katz: You're saying on occasion. The bulk of the problem is not officers bringing stuff in and selling to inmates?

Commissioner Molina: No, that is not the majority of the workforce that's here. I could tell you that, remember, for over two years, there were no correctional security practices being done in this department. A lot of this contraband, weapons, and drugs that are coming in, it's something that we're addressing with our tactical search operations, increased search of persons coming into our facilities.

We have, in the time that I've been here, recovered over 2,700 contraband weapons in our facility and over 400 contraband narcotics, whether it be paraphernalia or actual narcotics, over the last 6 months. Our workforce is working very hard to stabilize this department. I could say that the majority of the workforce, despite the pandemic, lack of an organizational health strategy by the prior administration has come here to provide services for not only a very vulnerable population, but a very volatile population.

Matt Katz: I'd like to play some tape from a board of correction meeting last month. This is the board that oversees Rikers and board member Bobby Cohen, who's a medical doctor, recently visited the EMTC intake area at Rikers. He described the scene in the pens, where people are held when they first arrive. Let's listen.

Bobby Cohen's recorded voice: It's hard to say this because I've been to a lot of jails and many, many visits, but it was really frightening EMTC. The admission area, the intake facility, the receiving room was packed with screaming people, more than a hundred people. Some had been there for many days. Usually, when one goes to a housing area, people ask you for help and occasionally you can help someone, but the mass of people, the volume of people who were not getting their medicine, not getting to court, not being able to urinate in a bathroom because there was no functioning bathroom in two of the places, having to urinate on the floor, not getting clothing--

Matt Katz: Commissioner, urinating on the floor, men's screaming, this is from an eyewitness, what's going on at intake?

Commissioner Molina: Our centralized intake facility is EMTC, who's what he's referring to. On every given day, there is a lot of significant movement that goes on in EMTC. It is not only a new admission facility, but those new persons that are coming in from the court may be turning around real quickly to go back out to court to have their case dealt with, in addition to people being transferred to other facilities to be housed.

Also, it is the preferred facility to use so that we can be in compliance with CDC recommendations, to make sure if we do find ourselves with another variant related to COVID, is the best place where we can quarantine individuals for 10 days so that we don't have an outbreak. I've toured the intake facility on a number of occasions, the mayor has also through the intake facility, it is a very chaotic place and it's a very fluid environment. You can stop by at any point in time and sometimes it's very busy in there, other days it's very quiet, it depends on the day.

We have a lot of individuals that are coming into our custody that have a lot of preexisting health condition. Some of that is physical, some of that is mental illness, so you're going to see a level of, I would say, controlled chaos in our intake facilities in order to manage these individuals through our system.

Matt Katz: Is there anything in your action plan that can decrease the disorder at the intake?

Commissioner Molina: I wouldn't describe it as a disorder. I think our action plan, what it represents is really an action-oriented roadmap towards really addressing four foundational issues that will help improve our operations. We want to be able to improve. It addresses us improving our security practices, it addresses improving management and deployment of our staff, improves the process of making sure that we have staff that's held accountable in a timely fashion, and really improves the supervision of our line staff and our facility leadership. That's what the action plan is really holistically trying to move forward within the department. We've begun many of those action-oriented steps when this administration took over in January.

Matt Katz: Theoretically, in a couple of months, the board of correction member goes back to intake and EMDC witnesses a more stable situation?

Commissioner Molina: Yes. Board of corrections members have the authority to come in here whenever they want to see the facility. I'd like to remind people that for over two years, nobody came here. The only individuals that came here were our uniform and non-uniform programmatic staff to provide services to this population, where everybody else was home. We're managing and rightsizing the system that has been neglected at minimum for over a decade.

This administration is taking action on these issues to stabilize and reform and evolve this department because the people that work here and the people that are placed in our custody here deserve better. They should have got better years ago and they didn't, but we're on a pathway to making that better now

Matt Katz: You mentioned that many of the people who arrive at Rikers are dealing with illness and you keep track of how many inmates miss medical appointments each month. There are thousands according to [unintelligible 00:24:50] data. Often it's because officers just don't take them to the infirmary. 11,789 missed appointments in April. There's been a suit from the Legal Aid Society. A judge found the department in contempt of court for failing to follow an order to provide proper medical care. Why are so many medical appointments missed, commissioner?

Commissioner Molina: I'll just put it into context for the audience. Calendar year to date, we have had over 180,000 medical appointments scheduled by our healthcare partner correctional health services, and consider that for a population on average in our custody of about 5,600 people. Just like in the community, people have the choice to reschedule or cancel doctor's appointments, but we must also understand that there is a myriad of reasons why a person in custody might miss a medical appointment.

70% of the medical appointments that are missed are the result of the people in custody refusing to go. They could refuse to go for a number of reasons, because they might have a court date that same day, they may have a family visit that they don't want to miss, they may be participating in some educational programming or workforce development programming, or they may simply no longer want to see a doctor.

I can tell you we've made a huge improvements in medical production. This month of June alone, we only had four missed medical appointments, where staff wasn't available to bring someone, and there's a whole host of reasons of why that may occur. We may have a security situation that we're dealing with, so staff is addressing that issue. There's a lot that comes up in the different facilities that we have to make sure that the patients are going to their medical appointments.

Matt Katz: You're saying that most medical appointments are missed because the detainee themselves chooses not to go or has [crosstalk] appointment?

Commissioner Molina: That is correct.

Matt Katz: I'd love to go back to the callers. Let's go to [unintelligible 00:26:49] in Harlem. Hi, [unintelligible 00:26:50]. Thanks for calling in. You're on with the commissioner. [unintelligible 00:26:55] are you there? Maybe not. All right. Let's try Nathan in Manhattan. Nathan, are you there?

Nathan: Oh, yes. Sorry. Nathan for Manhattan. Thank you so much for coming on.

Matt Katz: Yes, we're here. Do you have a comment or question for Commissioner Molina?

Nathan: Oh, yes. Thanks so much. Sorry, there was a hiccup there. Yes, I visited a prison upstate as part of a television crew and I asked one of the guards, because they had to escort us to the bathrooms, whether he knew anything about multi-generational recidivism, and he laughed and he said that he had a woman there in the prison who had actually been born there. He housed her mother and her daughter, and I was wondering if you had any comments on multi-generational recidivism. I think you used the word paramilitary earlier, and maybe the limits of the paramilitary organizations to actually punish people or rehabilitate people. How do you actually help the prisoners? Thank you.

Commissioner Molina: Thank you, Nathan, for your question. I can tell you I have seen, and one of the saddest things I've seen is really multi-generational recidivism. I remember meeting a young man in another jurisdiction where I was managing, where his grandfather and his biological father had served time. This young man was in his early20s and he was in our custody in the prior jail system I worked at.

I always say, if we want to save the future generation and we want to break this cycle of recidivism of multi-generational incarceration, then we have to treat and help the generation of today, and that's how you break this cycle of multi-generational incarceration that we see is highly especially amongst poor communities, communities of color.

We here at a jail, we have a lot of extensive programming that we provide the vulnerable population. We work with our faith-based partners, our education partners in the Department of Education. We have strategic partnerships with Exodus Transitional services, who helps us with our credible messengers in order to deal with helping individuals respond to incidents of conflict in a non-violent way. We work with Fedcap to make sure that we align those that we're releasing early so that they have a case manager so that they can navigate their reentry process and not recidivate again.

We're doing a number of things in order to reduce not only people returning to the justice system, but we are not the only system that needs to address this issue. Nationally, we have significantly lost a large number of a lot of things, like the psychiatric treatment in treatment facilities that has been significantly reduced over the decades. As we increase that capacity, not only can that be a prevention measure, but also in an alternative to incarceration because the justice system shouldn't be treating these individuals, they need a public health solution to address this issue.

Matt Katz: Before I let you go commissioner, let's go back to [unintelligible 00:30:01] in Harlem who I may have inadvertently hung up on earlier. Hi there, [unintelligible 00:30:06]. Thanks for calling back. Appreciate it.

Speaker 4: Hey. I'm calling Commissioner Molina because on the program a little bit earlier, you said that there were eight deaths and it seems like you are not counting the death of Antonio Bradleys who did die in DSE custody. We were told that this is a death that you all did not report, but he was in DSE custody when he died by suicide. We have been also told that there was no investigation, that there's been no accountability for who did not supervise him or do the required walks to make sure that that didn't happen. I would love to know why you said there were only eight deaths instead of the nine that had been widely reported.

Matt Katz: [unintelligible 00:30:43], I think it I might have said eight deaths, and that's because I believe, and the commissioner can correct me, eight people died while at Rikers. I believe the individual you're speaking of died while in a holding cell at a court, but the commissioner, can you clarify and give us a sense of why there have been eight or nine deaths so far this year in these facilities?

Commissioner Molina: Yes, sure. I think one is, there's a distinction. I acknowledge that persons that were in our custody, where they were compassionate released, or still in our custody that passed away. It's not like I don't acknowledge those situations, but there is a reporting criteria for how jails in the State of New York report in-custody deaths. That reporting process, there is eight, but I acknowledge the ninth gentleman that passed away, even though he was compassionate release, his situation happened while he was in our custody.

In that situation, our officers did respond quickly. They actually brought the gentleman back and got into hospital care, and we utilized compassionate release so that it's easier for the families while the person is in hospital care to be able to visit with their loved one. Hopefully, in many cases, they would be able to come back and be healthy. In this gentleman's case, that was not the case. These are under investigation by the Attorney General's Office as well as the Bronx DA's office, so I can't go into specifics of those investigations, but we also conduct internal investigations to see how could we have performed better. We are shifting to becoming a learning organization to be able to do that.

Matt Katz: I want to ask about, since we were talking about these deaths, the board of correction did find that there were three deaths this year that involved situations where the detainees were in medical distress, but either there were no officers there to help them or those officers weren't cleared to interact with inmates.

One man was sick for days, vomiting, defecating on himself, but COs did not bring him to medical appointments. That's according to the board of correction. Another wasn't resuscitated by two correction officers assigned to his unit, one of whom wasn't even medically clear to interact with inmates, and then a third died after choking on an orange. He was brought to the medical clinic by other incarcerated people because officers didn't help. How big of an issue is this, A, involving officers at Rikers who are not cleared to actually interact with detainees and help them if they're literally dying, and then B, just people preventable deaths?

There have been staffing issues that lead to actual deaths. At least three we know of this year, according to the board of correction, can you characterize it from your perspective, how big of a problem that is?

Commissioner Molina: From my perspective, I must first acknowledge that any death in custody is a tragic. No matter the cause. My heart always goes out to the families who have suffered the loss of a loved one who has died behind bars, whether that's through a preexisting health condition that somebody is coming into our system with, whether that's addiction to substance abuse that's driving a lot of their physical health failures, or some other mental distress.

We have had significant staff come back to work. We are not where we were at last year. I know what it's like to have a family member and a loved one that's incarcerated. I know what that feeling of hopelessness feels like. I didn't come to this job with any blinders on, I knew what the challenges that I was faced was coming here as a commissioner, but I knew that in Mayor Adams, who's a very action-oriented mayor, is trying to solve what he has described, that all of these rivers of failures that have existed for a generation feeding a sea of violence.

We are rightsizing the agency, the agency is reforming, the agency is evolving. We're working with our federal monitor, but we have to have strategic partners in this. I talked about some of our strategic partners, Exodus and Fedcap being our two main partners that are helping us do this work here. There are other institutions within the city, and that's why the mayor have created an executive order to make sure that all of these other departments can help leverage their resources to address a lot of the issues that have been ignored here over the decade at the department of corrections.

We have to have more than just shared interest when it comes to criminal justice reform. We need to be allies in this work and that executive order is what makes it more codifying our allyship in making us turn the department corrections around.

Matt Katz: Commissioner Molina, what happens at Rikers is of great concern to so many people, so we really appreciate you taking the time to come and talk to us about what you're dealing with and the work that you say that you're doing to reform the situation over there. Thanks a lot for coming on WNYC.

Commissioner Molina: Thank you for the opportunity.

 

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