NYC Correction Department tests out 12-hour tours for jail officers again

Graham Rayman, New York Daily News on Nov 25, 2025

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NEW YORK — The New York City Department of Correction is once again bringing back 12-hour tours to address lingering staffing troubles, DOC officials confirm.

A pilot program requiring officers to work their normal eight hours plus four hours of overtime will start Nov. 30 at the Robert N. Davoren Center on Rikers Island, the officials said.

“Locally and nationally, correctional facilities are facing staffing challenges that have required members of service to work longer hours,” DOC spokeswoman Latima Johnson said.

“We have consistently heard from staff that providing a more predictable schedule is one of the most important priorities for their quality of life. In order to provide schedules that are fair, deliberative and consistent, the Correction Department is piloting an 8-hour tour plus 4 hours of overtime at one facility to measure how well it works.”

Johnson said the agency discussed the move with staff and the unions for the past two months, prioritizing on doing it in a “fair and thoughtful way.”

The jail population has risen by 32% since January 2022, the start of the Adams administration, DOC figures show. In October, there were 7,067 people held in the city jails, compared to 5,354 in January 2022.

Nearly 1,000 have been held for longer than a year and 531 for two years or longer.

The number of court appearances by detainees this October, 16,423, was higher than in any month since October 2018 when the total was 16,460, the data shows.

The size of the uniformed staff has been declining since July 2018 when it was 10,854. In January 2022, the number of DOC staff was 7,668. As of October, it had fallen to 5,770, a drop of 25% during the Adams years.

A recruiting campaign under DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie has struggled to match the level of the pre-COVID years but has also shown improvement in the past two years, figures from the city comptroller’s jail statistics dashboard show.

A total of 361 new recruits graduated the Correction Academy in 2025, compared to 254 in 2024 and just 100 in 2023, the data shows. In 2022, the class totaled 229.

But in 2019, 821 new recruits joined the staff, and 839 joined in 2018, the data shows.

A spokesman for the correction officers union did not reply to a request for comment.

Last February, Maginley-Liddie announced a move to 12-hour tours, sparking a wave of anger from the rank and file, including a Feb. 24 shouting, chair-tossing outburst during a meeting in the Eric M. Taylor Center, another jail on Rikers Island, The News previously reported.

Maginley-Liddie backed down from the move a week later, with the officers’ union president Benny Boscio crowing that “COBA’s vigorous opposition” had forced her to drop the idea.

Before that, the last major move to 12-hour tours took place in 2021 and 2022, spanning the final period of the de Blasio administration and the first year of the Adams administration.

At the time, officials said the move across all jails was necessary because hundreds of officers went out on sick leave following the pandemic, with some officers abusing the sick-leave process.