NYC Comptroller Brad Lander nixes contract for Rikers, jails detainee video vendor

Correction Department managers haven’t given enough justification to renew the contract of a company that provides TV, movies and other entertainment to detainees at Rikers Island and other New York City lockups, the city comptroller says.

City Comptroller Brad Lander refused to renew the contract for Securus Technologies, which has a sole-source contract to supply entertainment to tablets detainees use in the city’s jails. Securus also supplies the tablets themselves, under a separate contract.

Lander sent a letter to Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie on Thursday citing a range of issues as he rejected the contract renewal — including that the agency never independently confirmed Securus was the only firm that could provide the service.

Instead, Lander wrote, correction officials just copied and pasted Securus’ justification for why it is the only vendor that could provide the service.

“The Department of Correction sought to register an inappropriately sole-sourced, no-bid contract that would enable a vendor with a history of data privacy violations to profit off the backs of incarcerated people through a DOC [Department of Correction]-granted wifi monopoly,” Lander said.

“There were so many problems with this proposed contract that city representatives did not sign off on these contracting requirements as required. And neither can we.”

A Correction Department spokesman did not reply to a request for comment.

The Correction Department, Lander also wrote, failed to lay out an analysis showing the contract value was fair, just inserting the abbreviation, “N/A.”

Securus has supplied “premium” content to the tablets including movies, television series, music and video games at a monthly subscription cost of up to $26 per category, according to the contract renewal signed between DOC and Securus on Jan. 19.

Detainees could also rent individual movies for $2 to $25, individual shows for up to $1.99 and individual games for up to $8.65, the contract renewal states. A “gold” package of 100 newly released movies and TV shows was priced at $21.99.

By comparison, a subscription to Max — the successor to HBO — starts at $9.99 with ads, while Netflix is $15.49 without ads and $6.99 with ads, the services’ websites say. Apple’s iTunes costs $.99 per song while Spotify is $10.99 a month.

The Securus renewal contract would have been worth roughly $1.7 million, depending on how much detainees spend on the service, Lander’s letter states.

The contract renewal provides that Securus could increase the price once each year at its own discretion without Correction Department approval.

“The contract provides Securus with complete and unchecked discretion to increase prices at its sole option without sufficient oversight,” Lander noted.

The letter noted DOC is behind on required vendor performance evaluations dating to 2021. “The failure to have completed these evaluations in a timely manner indicates that the agency did not consider the vendor’s performance when affirming its responsibility,” Lander writes.

Securus which has long provided the detainee phone service on Rikers Island, has been controversial in the past. In 2022, detainees lost access for a period to the tablets, WNYC reported.

In 2023, then-Correction Commissioner Louis Molina intended to hire Securus to perform the scanning and copying of paper mail when he tried to get paper mail banned from the jails based on the claim that it was an entry point for contraband drugs. The effort was blocked by the city Board of Correction after a flood of criticism from advocates and City Council members.

In 2021, the Daily News reported that an error by Securus allowed more than 1,500 confidential calls between detainees and their lawyers to be wrongly recorded by the Correction Department.

The company has also been criticized over the years for charging high prices for calls to people held in jails and prisons and for mining and reselling personal data of people held in immigration detention centers.

A $5.3 million contract renewal to Securus for the right to supply the tablets themselves remains pending, procurement records show.