Just days before a federal judge begins to hear arguments in favor of appointing a third party to run the beleaguered city jail system, the head of the Department of Correction is leaving to take a position in City Hall.
Commissioner Louis Molina will step down from his role in charge of Rikers Island and other city lockups “sometime in November, and his replacement will be named in the coming weeks,” said City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamalek.
Late Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams named Molina, a former NYPD detective, assistant deputy mayor for public safety. He will serve under Deputy Mayor Philip Banks who oversees the NYPD and the city’s other uniformed law-enforcement agencies.
“Public safety and justice are the prerequisites to prosperity, and that’s why, every day, Louis Molina gets up and ensures we are delivering both those priorities to those in our care,” Adams said in a statement.
He said Molina had displayed “exceptional leadership … to reverse decades of mismanagement and neglect” as correction commissioner over the past 22 months.
But over the summer Molina came under fire from Steve Martin, the court-appointed federal monitor of the city jails system. Martin accused him of repeatedly trying to hide serious violence behind bars and for failing to take substantial action to reform the department.
Molina, who recently visited Paris and other parts of Europe with multiple staffers to study international prisons, has long been rumored to be seeking another job in the administration.
He has also balked at oversight, repeatedly ducking city Board of Correction hearings including the latest one last week. Afterwards, the board took the unusual step of sending a letter demanding he show up to the next hearing.
Molina did maintain a good relationship with the three unions representing jail officers and supervisors.
“I’m going to miss him,” said Correction Captains’ Association President Patrick Ferraiuolo.
“He was definitely one of the best, if not the best, commissioner I’ve ever worked under,” he added. “Unfortunately with the lack of staff it’s an uphill battle. I think he did an incredible job with what he had.”
A Rocky Beginning
Molina was one of the first commissioners announced by Adams before he was sworn in as mayor in January 2022.
The jail boss’ tenure was marred from the start when he pushed out the department’s head of investigations, Sarena Townsend, who’d tackled thousands of backlogged use-of-force cases in collaboration with a court-appointed monitor — drawing the ire of unions representing correction officers.
Townsend said Molina had asked her to clear 2,000 pending disciplinary cases.
On Tuesday, Townsend hailed his move out of DOC, noting 28 incarcerated people died during his tenure.
She said he has left the department “in shambles and on the brink of receivership.”
“He drained the department of talented, reform-minded leaders and replaced them with cronies, demolishing reforms that were so needed for both staff and detainees,” she added. “Whoever replaces him has an impossible task of undoing seemingly permanent harm.”
On Nov. 17, a Manhattan federal court judge is going to begin hearing arguments on whether the Department of Correction should be placed under the receivership of a federal appointee.
As commissioner, Molina also eased a rule banning correction officers from wearing cargo pants with multiple pockets. City investigators had previously suggested the ban to limit possible contraband officers could smuggle into jails.
That dress code had long upset the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association.
More recently, Molina tried to convince Martin, the federal monitor, to leave out damaging information from his public reports.
“The jails remain dangerous and unsafe, characterized by a pervasive, imminent risk of harm to both people in custody and staff,” Martin wrote in his 10th report evaluating operations at Rikers Island and other city lockups earlier this month.
In the summer of 2022, Molina launched a Jails Action Plan designed to reverse a spike in stabbings and slashings, along with high rates of uses of force on inmates by correction officers.
It didn’t work.
“While a few of the department’s recent proposals (if meticulously developed and properly implemented) could address problems in discrete areas, most recent proposals remain haphazard, tepid, and insubstantial and will not create the type of culture change and practice improvements that are prerequisite to effective reform,” Martin stated in his last report.
The number of stabbings and slashings this year has “significantly increased,” the monitor noted.
And some stabbings and slashings aren’t reported for days — if at all — according to Martin.
“Staff reporting of serious events continues to be unreliable,” the report said. “Reports of serious injuries are delayed, and in some cases, do not occur, and the department’s convoluted reporting conventions further compound the problem.”
