Standards Specialist

About the New York City Board of Correction

The New York City Board of Correction ("BOC" or "the Board") is a nine-person, non-judicial oversight board, which regulates, monitors, and inspects the correctional facilities of the City. Established in 1957, BOC is one of the earliest independent oversight boards of custodial and detention settings in the United States. The Mayor, City Council and presiding justices of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court for the First and Second Judicial Departments (in joint nomination with the Mayor) appoint its members.

The City Charter mandates the Board’s five functions:

• Establish and ensure compliance with minimum standards for the care, custody, correction, treatment, supervision, and discipline of all persons held or confined under the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction ("DOC" or "the Department");
• Investigate serious incidents;
• Review grievances from people in custody and staff;
• Evaluate the performance of DOC; and
• Make recommendations on areas of key correctional planning.

The Board established the Minimum Standards on conditions of confinement in 1979, mental health care in 1985, and health care in 1991. In 2007, BOC finished a comprehensive review of the Minimum Standards and adopted a series of amendments. Since 2014, the Board has engaged in rule making five times, including rules related to the prevention of sexual violence, reporting on serious injuries, and the elimination of punitive segregation or solitary confinement.

With offices in lower Manhattan and Rikers Island, BOC works regularly with DOC and Health + Hospitals, and often with other partners, on a wide range of criminal justice issues germane to its oversight responsibilities. BOC is a key municipal partner in the movement for safer, smaller, fairer, more humane jails, which minimize negative consequences, such as violence to persons in custody and staff.

The Board brings to this work a strong emphasis on public reporting.

With new staff leadership, funding, and Board members, along with increased public attention and jail reform efforts underway, BOC is in a period of growth and change.

The Board seeks a Standards Specialist ("Monitor") with a passion for justice, fairness, and human rights, and the ability to collaborate with administration, monitoring, legal and research staff to leverage the powers of the Board. This is an opportunity to work under the supervision of experienced directors, and collaboration with monitors who have spent years working inside of jails and enforcing the Minimum Standards.

We are a nationally unique institution with broad powers of access and oversight under the New York City Charter.

The Standards Specialists are critical to the work of the Board. They serve as the Board’s and the City’s "eyes and ears" in the jails on Rikers Island, as well as the court pens and hospital prison wards. To promote compliance with the Board’s Minimum Standards, monitoring staff have unfettered access to the jails.

• Conducting regular tours of assigned jails, court pens, hospital prison wards
• Providing written and oral reporting on conditions and minimum standards of assigned jails, courts, or hospital wards
• Enforcing the Minimum Standards by visiting jails, taking and resolving complaints from staff and people in custody
• Examining DOC’s compliance with the Minimum Standards, consent decrees, and other legal mandates and Departmental policies, procedures, orders and directives
• Analyzing compliance by the Correctional Health Services (CHS) with the Health and Mental Health Care Minimum Standards
• Preparing written reports on all investigations, surveys, and analyses
• Providing technical assistance to DOC administrators to achieve compliance and improve working and living conditions for staff and people in custody
• Conducting fact‑finding and investigations of unusual incidents such as deaths, disturbances, and escapes, and preparing reports, studies, surveys, and correspondence regarding such incidents
• Helping review and analyze requests from DOC and CHS for variances from the Minimum Standards
• Assisting in processing, evaluating and preparing…