Audit: Rikers Accounting Sloppy

Source from:  BY DAN JANISON Staff Writer 08/06/2004

Jail officials failed to properly account for the merchandise that commissaries on Rikers Island sell to inmates, the city comptroller says in a new audit. Comptroller William Thompson's latest report, due for release Thursday, gives further details of the long-term problems tracking jail supplies, a key theme in a long-running Department of Correction scandal. "Because of inadequate controls over record-keeping, DOC lacks an accurate count of what is on hand at the commissaries, increasing the risk that inventory may be misappropriated," the report says. During the probe, the agency complained that the auditors' methods would make the problem seem bigger than it was. But DOC spokesman Tom Antenen said the jail system has been following Thompson's nine recommendations, which include taking inventory more frequently and being more diligent about using check-out scanners. Correction Commissioner Martin Horn requested the new audit, as he did with a recent probe from which the comptroller found severe disfunction in the handling of warehoused supplies prior to Horn's appointment. The jail system has 10 commissaries, or inmate stores, including eight on Rikers, where an inmate may shop once a week and make purchases up to $100. Inmates ask for goods at a clerk's window and supply identification to officers, who then supply the items and debit inmates' personal accounts without any cash exchanged. A total of 145 types of goods worth an estimated $13 million a year are sold at the commissaries — from kosher salami to postage stamps, batteries, soda, pound cake and deodorant. Auditors turned up accounting problems at commissaries in the George M. Motchan Detention Denter and at the Eric M. Taylor Center, separate facilities on Rikers. At both jails the physical counts of inventory, for example, were conducted by the same personnel "who were actively involved in day-to-day commissary operations," which is against the rules, probers said. Thousands of dollars' worth of discrepancies were found between the amount of inventory on hand and the amount reported in the inventory records, the audit staff found. Proper procedure was not followed for the condemnation and disposal of dated commissary goods, they said, and the agency's Central Commissary Unit failed to investigate discrepancies. "In the end, what this cries out for are greater controls and putting in place a system that works," Thompson said through a spokesman. Before smoking was banned in the jails in April 2003, the commissaries sold millions of dollars' worth of cigarettes. During the Giuliani administration, rebates from tobacco companies funded an off-budget charity — from which a former jail official later pleaded guilty to misappropriating more than $100,000. Enditem