The latest Rikers Island scandal predates Eric Adams’ mayoralty, but the fact that it only surfaced this week is fresh proof of how entrenched the rot is.

The Department of Investigation report dates to 2021, but it was late 2020 that DOI found more than $780,000 in unused equipment in a closed Rikers facility, including a beyond-sweet hangout space with leather sofas, a big-screen TV and a mini-fridge.

Most of the cached tools, snowblowers and other goods were plainly destined to be snuck off-island and sold for the perps’ personal profit.

We hear Correction Department inventory control is so lax that such scams have gone on for decades.

Correction Commissioner Louis Molina, hired by Adams to change the jails’ culture, has since cleaned house in the agency’s maintenance and repair division, but this is still another sign the mayor was right to blast the “generational problems”  at Rikers.

Heck, gangs sometimes still control whole jail units: That’s how a violent drill rap video got filmed inside the complex in March.

Yet the commissioner’s efforts are undermined by the jail unions resisting reform and lefty City Council members still pushing the “replace Rikers” fantasy — as if the physical jails are the root of the problem, rather than the culture of those who work in them.

City Hall hates the idea, but we still think a federal overseer could be a huge help — a new dog in town with power to toss outdated work rules and put the kibosh on politicians’ red-herring “solutions.”

At the least, Molina has plenty of work still to do: Another inmate was found dead this month, the ninth this year and the 28th of Adams’ 22-month tenure.

Without faster change, more in-custody fatalities are ahead.