NYC jails watchdog board chair Dwayne Sampson pushed agency to adopt program that could have benefited his nonprofit

Soon after he was named chair of the city Board of Correction, Dwayne Sampson floated a plan to help young New York City black men that could have benefitted non-profits in which he is a leader — a potential violation of city ethics rules, the Daily News has learned.

The episode, critics say, is indicative of Sampson’s sharp elbows and do-it-my-way approach to his job that has come to define his tenure as Board of Correction chair.

Sampson proposed in May that the Board of Correction partner with his non-profit, the Transportation Diversity Council, and a Harlem-based non profit, 100 Black Men Inc., where he sits on the board.

The idea was to use some portion of a $4.9 million grant obtained in 2022 by 100 Black Men to develop programs to help detainees at Rikers Island and other city jails.

Sampson’s letter said the program would monitor roughly 50 “justice involved” young men each year and provide them with “entrepreneurial skill development, paid experience, and leadership readiness to pursue new opportunities and goals.”

The Transportation Development Council “developed this draft proposal in collaboration with the Board of Corrections to reach the most disenfranchised population,” Sampson wrote in a May 12 email under TDC letterhead.

Sampson is the founder and president of TDC and runs it out of his Brooklyn home, records show.

Sampson made his proposal before being advised by Board of Correction staff to consult the city Conflicts of Interest Board, which advised he had to recuse himself and would need permission from city officials to remain on the board of 100 Black Men, an internal BOC memo states.

The memo did not address his TDC role, and the current status of his proposal is unclear.

Erik Cliette, an official of 100 Black Men to whom Sampson’s proposal was also addressed, did not return phone calls from The News.

Government ethics watchdogs say Sampson’s effort to involve his non-profits in the Board of Correction’s work is problematic.

“Public officials are not allowed to use their official positions to personally enrich themselves or their businesses while in office,” said Rachael Fauss of the group Reinventing Albany.

“That’s why we have conflict of interest laws — to address this exact type of issue. Attempting to get funding for your own businesses or non-profits when you hold a position of power in government is completely counter to our city’s ethics laws.”

Sampson never mentioned his effort to other members of the Board of Correction, four sources said.

Another Board of Correction member connected to a non-profit that serves city jail detainees recused herself from a discussion about funding cuts to her group in June. That board member, Rachel Bedard, is on the board of the Osborne Association, which provides social services at Rikers Island and other lockups.

Though the city Charter confers no special powers to the Board of Correction chair, Sampson just five months into his tenure has acted — according to some observers — as if he is running the agency.

But the board’s chairman is not the agency’s top manager, says former board chair Stanley Brezenoff.

“I used to bemoan the fact that I had no power,” said Brezenoff, a former deputy mayor during Ed Koch’s administration and a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

“The chair is as much a broker and facilitator with a tremendous amount of diplomatic responsibility,” Brezenoff said.

“The notion that a board chair is anything but a convener is foreign to me.”

Others suggested the proposal was an effort to divert the 67-year-old Board of Correction from its central mission of investigating the jails and setting minimum standards — a struggle on its $2.2 million annual budget against the $1.4 billion budget of the Correction Department.

“This would be a radical redirection of the board’s functions,” said one board member who only learned of Sampson’s proposal from The News.

During Sampson’s tenure, the agency has stopped sharing preliminary death reports and has taken a hard line on Freedom of Information requests.

Sampson did not respond to detailed questions from The News. Board spokeswoman Denise Upshaw said she had “no official statement at this time,” but invited The News to submit a Freedom of Information request.

A number of board meetings have been marked by contentiousness.

During the May 16 meeting, Sampson removed Dr. Bobby Cohen and Jackie Sherman, a lawyer, from the committee that probes deaths in the jail, replacing them with two DOC favorites. The committee had been credited with hard-hitting reports showing breakdowns that contributed to the fatalities.

Sampson said of the removals, “We’re looking for new and different views.” When Cohen tried to object, Sampson said, “That is a done decision.”

Brezenoff called Sampson’s decision to remove Cohen from the death committee “ludicrous.”

“He [Cohen] is the ultimate gadfly. But just because he’s calling truth to power, you remove him? There’s an arrogance and ineffectuality there,” Brezenoff said.

Later in the May 16 meeting, the outspoken advocate Dr. Victoria Phillips began criticizing Sampson. It’s difficult to tell from an audio recording of the meeting what Phillips was concerned about, but after a half-hour, Sampson ordered an officer to expel her from the room.

Phillips refused to leave, and other audience members defended her. When board member Felipe Franco called for an executive session, meaning the board would meet privately, Sampson tried to block it.

“We have a security issue,” Sampson said. “There is a point of order.”

But board member DeAnna Hoskins countered, ‘We don’t need your permission. You don’t have control over the majority vote of the board.”

Two weeks later, Sampson tried unilaterally to install his own executive director instead of the well-liked Interim Executive Director Jasmine Georges-Yilla, records show.

The incidents with Phillips and Georges-Yilla triggered a board revolt which led to a dramatic 15-minute special meeting on June 5 in which Sampson’s choice was rejected and new rules were approved to require committee assignments to be brought to a vote.

Sampson tried to block the special meeting that morning and did not attend. Nor did the two board members favored by Mayor Adams administration.

Around that time, Sampson insisted Georges-Yilla vacate her office so he could take it over, forcing Hoskins to intercede to stop it, three sources familiar with the incident said.

Sampson worked for 23 years for the MTA, rising to Superintendent of Maintenance in the Department of Buses, a role where he made $108,000 in 2016. He was also involved in the creation of a school in the Bronx called the Bronx Design and Construction Academy, and contributed to various Eric Adams campaigns.

After he retired, he focused on the Transportation Diversity Council, a nonprofit based in his Brooklyn home that appears to advocate for more diverse hiring in transit agencies. The most recent tax return indicates TDC took in $282,000 in 2021.

Sampson and two other TDC board members – James Harding and Connie Crawford – were also on Mayor Adams’ transition team.

Sampson also operates a private consulting company, also from his home, called Sampson Management Enterprises.

All of this is theater, though, set against the mission of the Board of Correction to keep an eye on the Department of Correction, Brezenoff says.

“We, the city, are responsible for these individuals in the jails,” Brezenoff said. “There’s a slippery slope with an agency claiming they can be invisible in their operations. What’s to prevent the NYPD or child welfare from doing the same thing?”