Rikers Programs Suffer After Cuts, Despite Mayor’s Promises

“Nothing exists over there. The only thing that exists is you decide to go to the library, if you can, and you find some old GED book, because nobody’s looking at it, and it’s missing pages, and you grab that.”

Adams’s office referred New York Focus to the Department of Correction. The department has hired five new employees to handle programming in recent months, Dwyer told New York Focus in an email. Prior to the cuts, dozens of nonprofit staff members came to the island each day.

“People in custody have not lost the ability to engage in the same programming curriculum/content they were previously afforded by a nonprofit facilitator. The hours of group programming on-unit have not shifted,” Dwyer wrote.

The department does admit that programs have been canceled. At a July meeting before an oversight body, Nell McCarty, the Department of Correction’s director of counseling and social services, said that the department has eliminated some one-on-one offerings and transferred staff to group programs.

“Obviously something had to give in order for us to focus on doing group” programming, McCarty said at the meeting. “I don’t want this shift to be considered a loss of services.”

For one-on-one conversations, McCarty suggested that incarcerated people could turn to chaplains or recreation staff.

“We’re not changing, but rather broadening, to incorporate the universality of the group experience,” she said.

Dwyer did not answer questions about whether specialized offerings like workplace safety training and cognitive behavioral therapy have been replaced.

A city-employed mental health provider at Rikers, who asked not to be identified for fear of professional reprisal, said that incarcerated people have faced significant losses of programming since the cuts went into effect.

The losses have been particularly painful in housing areas for people with mental health issues. “This one patient, she’s frequently asking, ‘Where’s Stacy? When is Stacy coming back?” the provider said, referring to a nonprofit worker who previously cared for the patient. “Despite not always being 100 percent grounded in reality, she did know what a positive impact and how helpful this person was to her.”

“The Department of Correction did not replace anything in the mental health housing areas that is anywhere equivalent,” they added.

There are more services still operational in specialized units, like those that house young adults or LGBTQ people, the provider said. But in other units, courses on practical life skills like finding housing or employment have been replaced with generalized counseling — if there are any offerings at all.

“Their statement was, ‘Well, we’re going to replace this, there’s not going to be any loss of services,’ the provider said. “I can say for certain that that’s not true.”