The New York City Department of Correction provides for the care and custody of people awaiting trial in detention or convicted and sentenced to one year or less of jail time in New York City. DOC houses adults aged 18 and older of all genders across eight facilities on Rikers Island and the Bronx. While the Department’s primary goal is the safety and security of everyone in our facilities, we also strive to provide a path for successful reentry into the community. To that end, people in custody receive services not only from DOC Programs Division, but also Correctional Health Services, NYC Department of Education, and a number of nonprofit service providers.
In 2017, the City of New York made a commitment to close the remaining, active jail facilities on Rikers Island by creating a network of four, reimagined, stand-alone jail sites in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. This new network of jails, termed the “Borough Based Jails” or “BBJ”, was designed in an effort to create newer, safer, and more efficient jail facilities for both persons in custody and staff. Additionally, BBJ aims to strengthen connections to families, attorneys, courts, medical and mental health care, and faith and community-based organizations by being closer to the local communities.
The Borough Based Jail Initiative is dedicated to outlining strategic ways to improve current processes within the jails, and to modernize the Department as it transitions to the new facilities. The graduate student working on this project will be tasked to assist the Strategic Initiatives Unit in understanding areas for improvement in day-to-day operations, specifically related to how persons in custody are accounted for, and how persons in custody related reports are generated and tracked. This project will focus on conducting an evaluation of current operations and generating a strategic plan for how to improve efficiency in the process and modernize these specific administrative tasks within the new jails.
The final deliverable will be a strategic plan that clearly outlines a plan of action for the Borough Based Jails on how to modernize persons in custody related reports and how to reduce inefficiencies within the current process. Additionally, an appendix with the research and findings found on how these processes are currently done shall be provided. The Department also asks that these findings, and the strategic plan be given in a presentation at the conclusion of the capstone.
The NYC Department of Correction envisions this project beginning in January of 2024 and should be completed on or before August 1, 2024. The Strategic Initiatives Unit is committed to providing full support to this capstone through necessary access to staff, data, and information as deemed essential to this project.
