NEW YORK — The New York City Correction Department last year found a program that worked to reduce violence in some units in its jail for younger detainees — but then the agency fired the initiative’s leader and now its future seems very much in flux.
The decaying 50-year-old jail for young detainees, known as the Robert N. Davoren Center, has historically been among the most violent of Rikers Island facilities. The people involved in the program, called the Young Adult Restorative Housing Initiative, thought they could change that.
Over six months in the last half of 2021, they took over several housing units in the Davoren Center with the goal of giving detainees more of a sense of ownership and control during their incarceration.
They used a lottery system to select detainees for the program — a random method that didn’t consider detainees’ gang membership or other security concerns.
Specially trained correction officers and detainees in the program worked jointly on the housing area rules and used “restorative circles” to defuse tension. Family days were held. Detainees got to decide what colors to paint their housing areas. Intense discussions were held about race and the history of Rikers. Some officers taught their own classes.
“We heard from detainees and staff that so many of the problems they faced comes down to communication,” said Alex Frank, a former Correction Department assistant commissioner and an architect of the initiative.
“When they understood that everyone is behind these walls in this filth together, we found a lot more compassion. It becomes a humbling and humanizing moment, as in, ‘Maybe we’re not enemies.’”
The sample size was small — 40 detainees in all — and the omicron COVID variant intervened.
But there were no stabbings or slashings in the unit. Detainees in the program got into just one fight, correction officers reported just one use of force, and from November through January there was no problem with the staff absenteeism that plagued other Rikers housing units and jails.
Elsewhere in the Davoren Center, 47 knife attacks were reported in the same period. The Davoren Center houses about 750 detainees, though the number fluctuates month to month.
There was talk of expanding the program. But when Mayor Eric Adams’ new jail administration arrived in January, the new correction commissioner, Louis Molina, cleaned house of appointees of former Mayor Bill de Blasio — including Frank, who was fired Jan. 27.
Frank’s colleagues turned down jobs with the new administration in solidarity. “The way they treated our comrade in arms who got us here — it seemed disrespectful and undermining, and I can’t be a part of that,” family advocate Tracey Wells-Huggins said. “It’s all of us or none of us.”
Asked why Frank was fired, Correction Department officials insisted that she actually quit because she was rebuffed when she asked to report directly to Molina.
However, the Daily News obtained a a copy of Frank’s termination letter, which said “her services will no longer be required.” The letter ordered her to surrender her ID card, Correction Department cell phone and her laptop before she could get her last paycheck.
The new regime at Rikers decided the initiative didn’t work well enough, said Correction Department spokesman James Boyd. “The pilot program implemented under the previous administration didn’t go far enough to address and support the needs of detainees who have behavioral issues,” Boyd said.
Molina and Mayor Adams introduced an unrelated mentorship program July 7, dubbing it the “Fatherless No More Initiative.”
The Correction Department did not respond to requests from The News for an interview about its current efforts in the Davoren Center — though two officials insisted the Young Adult Restorative Housing Initiative is continuing.
A Correction staffer said the initiative is continuing in a less ambitious form and that some officers specially trained for the program have been pulled out to work other posts.
In a statement released Monday after this story was published, Correction Department spokeswoman Danielle DeSouza said, “This report is yet another attempt by members of the previous administration to whitewash their failures and attack the new administration.”
The expansion officials dreamed of for the program last year appears unlikely. Frank says the Correction Department is missing a chance to change the Davoren Center’s culture.
“We’re talking about a paradigm shift,” she said. “The best program in the world is not going to have an impact in a system that is broken and corrupt.”
Molina has touted an increase in searches in the Davoren Center and a decline in stabbings and slashings there from 13 in April to 4 each in May and June. But for the year through July, there were 79 blade attacks, compared with 62 through July in 2021 — a 27% increase.
Correction Department stats suggest fights are down in the Davoren Center, reporting 472 through July compared with 660 through July in 2021 — a 28% decline.
From the inside, D’Andre Ellis, 20, paints a very different picture. “Safety is still high-risk. It’s bad,” said Ellis, a Davoren Center detainee who for three years has been awaiting trial on a murder charge. “They’ll put a kid locked up for a misdemeanor with a guy with a serious felony.”
“The cell doors are still broken. They come and fix them and they get broken again. I think Molina has a way of making people feel like something is changing, and it’s not.”
Ellis said that last week, a detainee moved from his housing area through a security door to a different unit and slashed another detainee. “The laceration wasn’t pretty. He should not have been able to move from one housing area to another,” he said.
Ellis also said staff hasn’t brought him to physical therapy for months. He hurt his back in October when he was jumped by another detainee. He has filed a lawsuit in Bronx Supreme Court alleging officers didn’t intervene in the melee.
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