amNY reported at the time<\/a>. <\/p>\nBut the mayor\u2019s latest budget proposal appeared to be taking the agency\u2019s staffing in the other direction. <\/p>\n
The commissioner said the proposed budget for the agency for the coming year reflected \u201cdifficult choices and a commitment to operating reasonably while continuing to move [the] department forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richards said the cut to vacant positions was based on the DOC\u2019s projected recruitment and attrition projections \u2013 the cuts are only being proposed for around a little less than half of the DOC\u2019s total vacant uniformed positions. <\/p>\n
While the DOC recently graduated a class of around 260 rookie officers, another 460 were eligible for retirement in May \u2013 over 80 percent of officers retire when they become eligible to do so. <\/p>\n
While Mamdani\u2019s budget proposal allows for 6,674 uniformed officers on the DOC\u2019s payroll, the agency currently employs fewer officers. As of last month, there were around 5,700 officers working in the city\u2019s jails. The number of officers on Rikers has been declining every year for the past half decade, according to DOC data. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur actual uniform staffing levels remain well below our authorized headcount,\u201d Richards said on Tuesday. \u201cThe department will continue to recruit at full force through investing in aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns to attract new staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even with the declines in staff, the DOC\u2019s officer-to-detainee ratio remains one of the highest in the country. <\/p>\n
The cut to the vacant positions also comes as the DOC is anticipating a smaller jail population as the city eventually moves toward shutting Rikers Island and replacing it with four borough-based jail facilities, which, all together, will only be able to hold around 4,400 detainees at any given time. <\/p>\n
While there are currently around 6,700 detainees in Rikers, Richards and Mamdani have said they are committed to reducing the number of people locked up in the city\u2019s jails.<\/p>\n
The commissioner said Tuesday that as the population decreases, the DOC will be able to reallocate its staff and reduce overtime. <\/p>\n
While the DOC, under multiple mayoral administrations, has long maintained a desire for more officers, oversight agencies and authorities have said the agency doesn\u2019t have a staff number problem, but a staff management problem. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Department\u2019s particular assignment practices\u2026 are burdensome and unreliable, creating loopholes that contribute to numerous gaps in coverage that require reassigning staff from other duties, requiring staff to work significant overtime, or worst case, leaving housing unit posts unmanned,\u201d the monitor tasked by a federal judge to keep track of conditions on Rikers said in a January report. <\/p>\n
The critique has also been made by advocates, who decried the mayor\u2019s first budget proposal earlier this year for not cutting back DOC staffing numbers enough. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday, some of those advocates celebrated the decrease in the vacant positions but said the city could do more to take the money saved from those reductions and put it into programs that help prevent and reduce incarceration. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen some real progress in the executive budget, particularly in addressing DOC budget waste and starting to rightsize their staff as we prepare to close Rikers,\u201d Darren Mack, the co-director of Freedom Agenda, said in a statement. \u201cBut DOC is still budgeted for four times more staff than the national average. We\u2019re here today to call on the City Council and Mayor Mamdani to build on this important step by moving more money into the programs that can prevent and reduce incarceration.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMayor Mamdani has indicated that he\u2019s serious about following the legal and moral mandate to close Rikers,\u201d he added. \u201cThis includes funding the things that keep communities safe, like community-based mental health treatment, housing, and services for people coming home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jacob Kaye The commissioner of the Department of Correction on Tuesday defended a nearly 600-officer cut proposed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-252952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}