Department of In-Correction

Add another failure to the list of things exCorrection Commissioner Joe Ponte didn’t do while spending so much of his time in his native Maine: stop hiring new jail guards with violent criminal records.

The Department of Investigation’s latest exposé of de Blasio-era mismanagement covers Correction hiring in 2016 — the year after a previous DOI report flagged the very same problems.

Ponte is directly to blame, the report notes, since he insisted on recruiting ever-larger trainee classes in shorter timespans, leaving his agency’s Applicant Investigation Unit little time to properly screen candidates. Among those hired in 2016:

A guy who’d been arrested for weapons possession and harassing a co-worker at a past job.

An officer who’d left the state correction system after being caught in “an inappropri- ate relationship” with an inmate.

One who’d been arrested for domestic violence — and his rap sheet was in his employment file.

Other recruits were clearly vulnerable to corruption. As DOI notes, the AIU relied on an honor system, with applicants self-reporting on their backgrounds, and didn’t use public databases to double-check that info.

Some of the officers flagged by DOI have been fired, others arrested. And some remain on the job.

Will this report prompt the Correction Department to clean up its act? Well, Commissioner Cynthia Brann served as Ponte’s deputy and, like him, was caught by DOI misusing her city car.

It really, really shouldn’t take an outside investigation for anyone to realize that jails are supposed to house criminals, not be run by them.