Advocates say the city’s Department of Correction has been struggling to provide adequate reentry services and programs to detainees at Rikers Island.
This started when the DOC ended its $17 million contract with five nonprofits that had initially been doing the work. Instead, the agency decided to provide the programming itself.
However, hundreds of detainees have since received less access to these programs than before, according to the Mayor’s Management Report.
Earlier this year, the Adams administration announced it would dedicate $14 million to the DOC to restore some programming, but advocates and critics say this is too little too late.
The CEO of the Fortune Society, Stanley Richards, who is formerly incarcerated and recently worked at the Department of Correction, and Jonathan Monsalve, the interim president and CEO of the Osborne Association, sat down with Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” Thursday to talk more about the work their nonprofits do and why it’s necessary that funding be restored.
“When people engage to a point where they have some hope that tomorrow is going to be better than today, that the future is going to be better than their past, that breeds a kind of calmness,” Richards said. “Without those services, people are feeling disconnected, people are feeling hopeless. And when people feel hurt, hurt people hurt.”
“A lot of what we do is geared toward supporting people while they’re in the inside, but also when they come home,” Monsalve said. “We’re from these communities, and we want to make sure that we’re there to help them transition back to the community successfully when they’re able to come home.”