Correction Commissioner Dora Schriro has a major problem: a massive breach of jail security. The Voice has learned that a convicted sex offender with a long rap sheet was recently able to repeatedly drive onto Rikers Island and roam jails and other highly secure areas over a period of more than week, right under the noses of dozens of clueless correction supervisors and officers.

Matthew Matagrano (pictured at right), was not an inmate during the period. The 36-year-old former resident of Yonkers and South Ozone Park is listed as a high-risk sex offender in the state's registry. Matagrano has a record of convictions for sodomy, first-degree sex abuse, burglary, and, not surprisingly, criminal impersonation. He has been arrested more than a dozen times, and has served several stints on Rikers.

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Okay folks, admittedly we're kind of hard on the Correction Department. We've published a bunch of articles about bad goings on out in the Rikers Island jails in recent years. But this time, we're going to throw some kudos to Commissioner Dora Schriro and Mayor Bloomberg for starting a new program to help prevent inmates from returning to jail once they are released. (Just under half of adult inmates who get out of jail go back within a year.)

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Courtesy of Ronald Spear's sister.

Ronald Spear.

On the afternoon of Dec. 19, Nellie Kelly's phone rang. The caller identified himself as an inmate on Rikers Island, and told her he had some bad news about her brother, Ronald Spear.

The inmate's name was Jesse James. He was 29, and had been awaiting trial since September in the jail known as the North Infirmary Command. James told Kelly that her brother was dead.

"He says, you don't know me, but I know your brother, I'm so sorry, they killed your brother today," Kelly tells the Voice.

Knowing that Ronald had serious heart and kidney ailments, and had complained repeatedly about the quality of Rikers medical care, she said, "How? Was it the wrong medicine?"

"No," James replied. "They beat him to death."

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The city Medical Examiner has classified the Aug. 19 death of a Rikers Island inmate who swallowed a ball of laundry detergent as a homicide, the Voice has learned.

The death of Jason Echeverria in the Mental Health Assessment Unit in the George R. Vierno Center is believed to be the first homicide on Rikers since 49-year-old Angel Ramirez died on July 17, 2011 after being struck by a correction officer during a scuffle.

Echeverria's death was initially thought to be a suicide, but the ME had not completed its investigation until this week. Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the ME, declined to comment beyond confirming the cause and manner of death.

People familiar with the incident tell the Voice that the death became a homicide because after Echeverria swallowed the soap, a correction officer notified his captain but staff did nothing to treat him for some time. That failure to act allegedly led to his death, they said.

The news left Echeverria's father, Ramon, at a loss for words. "I leave it in God's hands," he told the Voice. "I can't bring him back. I'm not saying he was an angel, but you don't let people die that way."

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Michael Hourihane, the top uniformed official in the city Department of Corrections has put in his retirement papers, and is expected to step down at the end of the year, the Voice has learned.

Correction Commissioner Dora Schriro called Hourihane, who had served the department for 32 years, "the consummate public servant and correction professional."

Things have been bumpy for the DOC over the past year. The Justice Department is investigating guard violence against inmates. A rise in inmate assaults on each other, an $850,000 settlement in an inmate lawsuit, a raft of new litigation, and, as the Voice reported last spring, the creation of an anti-violence unit which may have crossed the line in disciplining inmates. But whether Hourihane's retirement had anything to do with any of those things remains unclear.

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Word came down Friday that the city has agreed to pay $850,000 to the family of Tyreece Abney, who was beaten to death by Bloods gang members on Rikers Island eight years ago as correction staff allegedly watched and did nothing.

It was yet another recent big dollar settlement in fatal or near-death incidents involving staff complicity or passivity as violence churned around them. Christopher Robinson's family got $2 million in their lawsuit after the 18-year-old was beaten to death by bloods gang members. And Kadeem John got $850,000 for serious head and other injuries he suffered at the hands of inmates as guards did nothing. And Patrick Miller's mom got $1.5 million after the mentally ill, homeless man was beaten to death in the Bellevue Hospital jail ward by correction officers. In all, those four cases alone have cost the city $5.2 million.

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The son of a former top-ranking Correction Department official has been suspended and is under investigation for beating a handcuffed inmate with a baton after the inmate assaulted his brother, a correction officer, the Voice has learned.

Charles Davis, a probationary correction captain, allegedly struck the inmate with the riot stick and sent him to the hospital early this week at the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers Island. He was allegedly retaliating against the inmate for punching his brother, Correction Officer Larry Davis, Jr. earlier in the day.

The Davis brothers are the sons of Larry Davis, Sr., who retired in August, 2011 as Chief of Department, the agency's highest ranking uniformed officer. Davis left the job under the cloud of an investigation into whether he did favors for subordinates.

Davis Sr. had also been accused of taking a free trip to the Dominican Republic that his underlings financed. The August, 2011 inquiry was looking into allegations Davis had broken rules in allowing a correction officer to drive a department car to his home.

"Capt. Davis was a captain in the security line, and he waited for the inmate to be escorted to intake," a correction source says. "As the inmate was being escorted and was going past the security line, Davis just attacked him with the baton, right in front of other officers and captains. It took something like six people to pull him off the inmate."

Will Captain Davis be demoted and arrested? Well, back in June, Capt. Daniel Dipierri was suspended, demoted and arrested for hitting an inmate also at the George R. Vierno Center and then falsifying a use of force report by claiming the inmate had attacked him. We wonder what Davis' report said.

An inmate in a Rikers Island jail was found dead earlier today, in what is being investigated as a possible suicide, the Voice has learned.

The 41-year-old inmate, who had a history of arrests and psychiatric issues, was being held in the Anna M. Kross Center on a burglary charge. The Voice is withholding the inmate's name pending notification of his relatives. A Correction Department spokesman declined to discuss the incident until the family had been notified.

Our initial chronology of this case was a bit off. We had initially said that he had been in intake for days after his arrest, which does not turn out to be the case.

We have since learned the inmate was arrested on Oct. 6, admitted to the mental observation unit at AMKC on Oct. 7, and after a couple of days there, was sent to intake to be processed out for a court appearance today in Queens.

The initial speculation that he had done it on an intake pen containing other inmates was not accurate. He appears to have been alone, possibly in a bathroom, when he killed himself.

More as details develop.

In another of a range of efforts to reduce violence in the city's jail for teenage inmates, the Correction Department is going to require them to wear uniforms, rather than personal clothing.

Correction officials say the move will enhance safety and security among the Robert N. Davoren Center's teen population, which basically means it will remove competition over personal clothes and shoes, which is one of the reasons that fights start. The move, slated to started this week, was enabled by a rule change approved by the Board of Correction dating back to 2008.

And the reaction? Well, John Boston, project director of the Legal Aid Society's Prisoners Rights Project, says the devil is in the details.

"We are concerned about the implementation process based on past experience," Boston says.

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A genius at gaming the system until recently, Leib Glanz, the former Rikers Island chaplain cut loose for organizing a bar mitzvah party in a jail, and his brother, Menashe, pleaded guilty today to housing fraud, theft and lying in federal court in Manhattan.

Federal prosecutors say the two men defrauded government of $225,000 in section 8 housing subsidy money. In the scheme, Menashe Glanz got a section 8 apartment for his brother under false pretenses. Leib Glanz lived in the apartment from 1996 to 2011. Each man has agreed to pay fines. Leib Glanz faces up to one year in prison. Menashe Glanz faces up to 10 years.

Glanz, a jails chaplain for nine years, last hit the news in 2009 when he was caught arranging a party for Orthodox Jewish inmates being held in the Tombs in downtown Manhattan. He and three city jail officials who authorized these hijinks resigned over the scandal. He also arranged an engagement party and toted in snacks and movies for Jewish inmates to watch. A newspaper also caught him using a fire department parking placard that claimed he was an active firefighter.

In December, the city conflict of interest Board fined him $2,500 for accepting a silver wine glass and decorative plate from an inmate's family for arranging the bar mitzvah.