by George Joseph, published June 8, 2023

The City Council passed legislation today requiring the city jail system to provide transgender, gender-nonconforming, non-binary and intersex (TGNCNBI) detainees with services to prepare them for reentry into society — specialized programming that has fallen by the wayside since Mayor Eric Adams took office.

The legislation comes five months after a joint investigation by THE CITY and New York magazine, which documented how corrections officials under Adams gutted a specialized unit that formerly had helped TGNCNBI detainees connect with attorneys, get placement in gender-aligned jail units while on Rikers Island, and find post-release housing options.

The bill is the first of three proposals the Council expects to pass this year to support and protect incarcerated TGNCNBI people, who face some of the highest rates of sexual violence behind bars.

Councilmember Carlina Rivera (D-Manhattan), the bill’s chief sponsor, said she decided to push forward the legislation after a January council hearing in which she questioned Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina about THE CITY’s reporting, which found that Molina — who took office in January — pushed out top department figures who supported the unit, shelved an incoming policy directive meant to ensure gender-aligned jail placements, and stood by as the LGBTQ+ unit collapsed from within.

At the Council meeting, Molina admitted that his administration had left the unit with just one staff member for months, but denied that his agency had a “cultural problem,” despite the decision of two of the small unit’s staffers to resign in protest during his tenure.

“It was clear that the Department of Correction was not going to make this a priority, or even respond to its failure,” said Rivera, who chairs Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice, in an interview with THE CITY. 

Read more: https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/6/8/23753661/city-council-reentry-services-transwomen-rikers