Dismay Grows After City Budget Deal Axes Rikers Rehabilitation Programs

“We were very clear to all of our agencies — no cuts in services which are important. No layoffs. That was very clear directions,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams at a press conference after his initial budget presentation in January.

So why then, as of today, is daily programming at Rikers — which advocates and lawmakers say successfully reduces recidivism as well as the likelihood of violent incidents inside jails — being eliminated by the Department of Correction?

For people detained on Rikers who have been participating in these classes and services, it means they will no longer have a bright spot to look forward to each day while being held in pre-trial detention. For the workers in the program, it means many of them will have to find new jobs. For the broader public, it means people will be released from Rikers with less hope and fewer new skills that could help them chart a positive path in their lives.

The Rikers programming only costs $17 million annually — a drop in the bucket of the City’s $107 billion austerity budget for the upcoming year, which was finalized last night. The programming made up just 1.4% of the Department of Correction’s bloated $1.2 billion budget, and was the only component cut out of it.

Adams ordered almost all City agencies to cut their budgets for the coming fiscal year 2024 (FY24), which begins July 1. These are the third and largest round of cuts the mayor has demanded since taking office in January 2022.

But the New York Police Department has faced no cuts. (Actually, April, Mayor Adams announced a contract giving the Police Benevolent Association, the city’s largest cop union, $5.5 billion in raises and a new overtime rate of $93.75, 50% more than the current one). In addition to the NYPD budget, critics of austerity cite the fact that the administration has allocated $8.3 billion to reserves, the highest amount ever set aside in the city budget, while revenue continues to come in higher than expected each month.

The Fortune Society is one of the five community-based groups that were contracted by the Department of Correction (DOC) to lead the daily programming on Rikers Island. Its Prepare for Release program, also known as Individualized Corrections Achievement Network (I-CAN), provides skill-building workshops, discharge preparation services for people during incarceration and further resources after they are released.

“Just interacting with the other inmates that also had a purpose of changing their lives” was the most beneficial part of the programming for Alex (a pseudonym), who was released from Rikers in May. “It was a rewarding experience because we learned a lot. … Being incarcerated is rough as it is,” he said, “but the time went by kinda quick with the Fortune Society.”

The I-CAN program started in 2005, but it and other groups with a similar mission (currently The Osborne Association, SCO Family of Services, Greenhope Services for Woman and Fedcap Rehabilitation Services) have been running programming on the penal colony since Mayor David Dinkins initiated it in the 1990s. The providers visit 179 housing units across DOC jails, including 18 observation units for people with serious mental illness, and seven units for people in protective custody. All participation is voluntary. Altogether, the programming serves around 1,700 participants on Rikers, says the Fortune Society, with Rikers’ incarcerated population being around 6,000.

These organizations offer group sessions each day in all of Rikers’ housing units’ common areas for over an hour. Incarcerated people have had the chance to participate in work-training programs (certifications in construction and food prep), educational classes, stress- and anger-management programs, wellness programs, parenting classes, financial literacy lessons, entrepreneurship classes, life-skills classes, addiction programming and trauma-informed group therapy. (The Horticulture Society had its own contract with the DOC to offer gardening classes, and that is also being eliminated.)

“I addition to group services, we give them certificates that they can take to the judge, to the district attorney and to their lawyers, and say, ‘I’m engaged in something constructive while I’m inside,’” said Dr. Ronald Day, vice president of programs and research at the Fortune Society. “We are reducing violence and then increasing the chances that people can be successful when they get out,” Day told The Indypendent.

As of Monday, all classes and services will be upended. For some inmates, that means simply not having like-minded people to interact with and be supported by each day. For others, it means not having the opportunity to show their families they’re being active in jail, points out Jamel Ealey, who has worked at the Fortune Society since 2021.

“You know, man, we have our appreciation days, and we pass out our certifications, and that father is walking up to that podium — you should see the smile in the kid’s eyes, like the level of accomplishment — man —” said Ealey, cutting off during a phone conversation we had.  “Sorry — it’s just a little emotional,” he said.

“The trickle-down effect of [the cuts] is massive,” continued Ealey. “We’re not just talking about the people that are currently incarcerated. … We’re talking about the families that are never gonna be incarcerated, but are incarcerated because their loved one is.”

In addition to providing mental-health support, education and job-training certificates, many people that partake in programming while incarcerated continue with Fortune Society’ re-entry programs once they’re out.

The organization, for example, assisted Alex in finding housing upon his release from Rikers. He lives in a room with five other men in a transitional home. It’s not ideal, but the conditions there are better than those in the City’s shelters, where many people end up after being released from jail. Alex doesn’t have the support of family, so Fortune is who he was in touch with before his release; the organization picked him up and took him to his new room. He is now participating in Fortune’s program for the recently released and working four days a week through ACE Program, doing maintenance work and street cleaning around the boroughs. “I like it a lot; it keeps me busy,” he says.

“So far, so good. I am with the Fortune Society,” responded Alex when I asked him how things were going now that he’s out.

Earlier this year, the mayor asked the Department of Correction to trim its budget. It’s unclear whether it was asked to make the 3–4% cuts asked of nearly all other agencies, but the department, run by Commissioner Louis Molina, decided to boot a mere 1.4% of its budget, and in one place only: services run by outside organizations.

“They could have found other ways to get the funding cut,”  David Rodriguez, Fortune Society’s operational supervisor in community services, told The Indy. “They didn’t have to do this. You’re taking services away from folks who really don’t have a voice.”

Dr. Day says there are, in fact, many other ways to trim $17 from the DOC budget: “So you mean to tell me that, with the [job] vacancies that you have, and with the people that are not reporting to work, you’re going to cut the budget of people who have been consistently coming into the facilities?”

It costs around $500,000 to keep one person incarcerated for a year on Rikers Island, and, at a ratio of over one-to-one, the number of correction officers compared to inmates is the highest of any jail nationwide. Yet, the notorious penal colony’s conditions are also some of the worst in the country. The discrepancies here could be in part due to the fact that officers, represented by the Correctional Officers’ Benevolent Association (COBA) union, have a provision in their contract dating back to the 1970s that allows them to take unlimited sick days.

There have been few consequences for those who abuse the system, a New York Times investigation revealed last year. When previous Bill de Blasio-appointed DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi, a reformer, tried to tighten the rules around sick pay, he was met by fierce protests from COBA members, who had been calling out of work en masse during the pandemic. Commissioner Molina, appointed by Adams at the behest of COBA, re-loosened the rules shortly after his tenure began in January 2022. On one Tuesday in January 2022, around 2,600 of the DOC’s 7,800 uniformed personnel were out sick, according to the department.

Another way the DOC could save money is by working to diminish abuse on behalf of correction officers. Based on the number of claimant’s so far, the Comptroller’s Office includes $157 million in the department’s FY24 budget for the settlement costs of class-action lawsuits against the department for its mistreatment of incarcerated people.

Earlier this month, Federal Monitor Steve Martin slammed Commissioner Molina for security lapses and inaccurate reporting on a pair of incidents. A report Martin filed in federal court — the third one within just  three weeks — questioned how Molina could determine there was no wrongdoing in an incident where Rubu Zhao jumped to his death from the upper tier of a mental-health unit on May 14, or in another incident where a team of correction officers tackled a shackled detainee James Carlton on May 11 at the Vernon C. Bain Center, a jail barge known as “The Boat” that operates in tandem with Rikers. Carlton, 40, is now paralyzed from the neck down.

In another one of his recent reports, Martin said that Molina has failed to stop rampant violence inside Rikers, and that DOC officials have refused to divulge information about what happens behind bars. Officials continue releasing inaccurate or no information about violent incidents, including deaths at Rikers Island, says the monitor.

“The collateral consequence to eliminating programs from the DOC budget further insulates and isolates the DOC operations. Not having community-based partners coming to the jail, working in the housing areas and being in the facilities is another step toward retrenching and isolating what happens in the facilities,” Stanley Richards, deputy CEO of Fortune Society, told The Indy.  The Board of Correction, which has full authority to oversee DOC under the City Charter, has had its access to Rikers’ camera system restricted by the department, says Richards. “And that’s another collateral consequence of a department that’s moving in the wrong direction.”

“Removing our organizations from the department takes additional eyes and ears out of the facility. So that’s very consistent with what the commissioner has been doing, which is not reporting incidents in the jail,” added Day.

Seen as a sensible way to keep people occupied and out of trouble, the program survived under eight previous DOC commissioners, appointed by mayors ranging across the ideological spectrum, from Dinkins to Giuliani to de Blasio.

Fortune Society’s programming was focused at the Anna M. Kross Center, the largest jail on rikers with a capacity of up to nearly 3,000 beds, and on The Boat. Under de Blasio, services weren’t offered in the housing units, but in the chapel, gymnasium or in a classroom. “But over the last couple of years, things have gotten more intense in the facilities with respect to violence and gang issues, etc.,” says Day, so now services are delivered in the housing units and last just over an hour, compared to three hours previously.

Ealey, who works on The Boat and, along with his coworkers, is facilitating his last session today, said that before he arrives, the participants have often already set up the tables the group will use. “They actually look forward to [doing that]. They’ll actually be there before we get there a majority of time. You know, it’s a break in their monotony,” said Ealey.

Like Rodriguez, Day and Richards, Ealey participated in the programming himself while he was incarcerated. He was inspired by seeing Day come into his unit when he was locked up at the Manhattan Detention Center and sought out the Fortune Society the day after being released in August 2021. He was hired shortly thereafter.

The ability of Fortune Society staffers who had done time to relate to inmates has been an integral part of the program’s success, say both its participants and leaders. It makes it easier for incarcerated people to open up about their experiences, which Alex attested to many times during our conversation. “They used to bend out, they used to cry, they used to want to talk one-on-one with someone,” said Rodriguez.

Going forward, department officials say the services will be provided by DOC staff, something critics are very dubious of. The staff that would take on program facilitation is represented by municipal union DC 37 (not COBA, like the correction officers), and such duties are not written into their contract, so there is little incentive for them to take on the extra work, particularly because most staff avoid spending any extended period of time in the housing units. Additionally, there is a deep mistrust between inmates and DOC employees.

“We have connections with people that work in the facilities. And they have told us, there’s no way on this planet that they are going to be able to do what we’re doing,” Day told The Indy. 

“I think Corrections is struggling to do the job that we are asking them to do right now,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams at a rally outside City Hall on June 22. “There’s a lot of issues there. Let’s focus on that. Don’t take a whole other thing that you have to put onto your plate right now.”

Rikers has been in shambles for decades, but particularly since COVID, the conditions have deteriorated, putting those incarcerated in dire straits. “The food is terrible; the conditions are just terrible. It’s basically run by gangs, man,” Alex told The Indy. “It’s sad because it’s supposed to be ‘Care, Custody and Control,’ but it’s out of control, there’s no care, and the custody is trash. There’s no recourse for Rikers Island,” he said. “They even cut out some of the religious services; you can’t even have bibles any more.”

At least 19 people died on Rikers in 2022 and at least 15 in 2021, the deadliest years since the 1990s, when the jail population was at an all-time high.

“You shouldn’t balance the budgets on the backs of people who are in desperate need of services,” says Day.

Chiming in, Alex says, “I think it’s wrong because they don’t care about inmates. We’re just a paycheck. We’re just people to be housed as cattle. They don’t give a fuck about us.” He thinks that services shouldn’t be stopped, but bolstered: “They should have more programs, like help people get housing [upon release]. Everybody knows these [City] shelters are worse than prison. … I’m tired of living in three-quarter houses and shelters and halfway houses. They should have something in place for when guys come out instead of being in an atmosphere where people are stealing, people are fighting, people are getting cut, getting beat up.”

In marginalized communities, inhumane institutionalization begins long before jail, says Ealey. “You don’t just wake up and go to Rikers. They sought you out with group homes and the Division of Youth, and they put you in all of these institutions to already institutionalize you. So by the time you reach there, you just fall right into line,” he says. “It’s horrendous when you really delve into the inside of the socio-economic side of things,” adds Ealey. “A certain number of people gotta be incarcerated just to make the system work.”

On Tuesday, program facilitators broke the news to the incarcerated people they serve that group services would not resume the following week. Fortune Society’s budget allowed for the rehiring of only half of the program’s roughly 20 staffers. The other half are out of work  — and it’s not so easy to find jobs when formerly incarcerated. The news has left Day reeling.

“I never felt more appreciative of working with a particular team,” he said. When he initially told workers the programming was likely to be cut, “We had maybe 20 people in the room. And every single one of them talked about how devastated they were — not that they might be out of a job, but that the participants that they serve on a daily basis would be like, ‘What, you’re not going to be here anymore?’” said Day.

Fortune Society plans to continue to exert pressure on the City to restore the funding. “We feel that there is a moral imperative to be critical of the department, to speak out against an organization even if it funds you,” Day told The Indy. 

And of course, all people interviewed for this article can’t wait to see the day Rikers is finally shuttered.