Oversight for thee: DOC wants more monitoring of detainees even as it grows opaque

Soon enough, Rikers detainees might start getting scanned copies of letters from outside, as opposed to the letters themselves. What’s billed as a measure of convenience and security could also allow the Department of Correction much greater surveillance over what those in custody are communicating with others about.

It seems like the DOC is hungry for more tools to track and control what gets to its detainee population, but is itself cagey about what information gets out about its own operations and outcomes, as evidenced by its increasing noncooperation with the Board of Correction, one of its most significant oversight bodies.

The clearest sign of that backsliding transparency came with DOC Commissioner Louis Molina’s decision to cut the board off from remote access to the department’s extensive video surveillance archives, for reasons that were explicitly about limiting public view of its operations. As outlined in BOC Executive Director Amanda Masters’ resignation letter this week, obtained by the Daily News, that was only one manifestation of the DOC’s clamming up.

Masters pointed to Molina’s recent statements disparaging the oversight agency and apparently misunderstanding the board’s role and the department’s obligations. Last month, Molina accused the BOC of attempting to paint the DOC in a bad light, and referred to “rules of engagement” in a City Council hearing, as if the BOC was a battlefield enemy and not an entity tasked with helping it do better by the people in its custody.

Molina’s hostile attitude has filtered down to DOC line staff, wrote Masters. It’s a shame given that Molina has so far been effective enough at reining in violence and dysfunction that Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain has agreed not to consider a federal receiver, in part on the recommendation of Federal Monitor Steve Martin.

Yet if Molina wants us to trust that conditions keep improving, it doesn’t inspire much confidence for him to freeze out a watchdog to the point that she feels she can’t do the job anymore.