A federal judge seized control of New York City’s troubled jail system Tuesday — ordering that an outside official be brought in to clean up Rikers Island and other lockups.
The 77-page order by Manhattan federal Judge Laura Swain effectively appoints a federal receiver — a move long desired by advocates — to correct dangerous conditions in Rikers that city and Department of Correction officials have tried and failed to do under a decade-old court case known as Nunez.
Swain’s sweeping order gives the receiver — called an independent manager — full control over the city’s jail system in order to turn things around within a three-year period, with safety as the first goal.
The order comes months after Swain found the Big Apple to be in contempt of a 2015 court order and settlement agreement to drastically reform the violence-plagued system — a task that previously fell to a court-appointed monitor who spent years growing more and more frustrated with city and jail officials’ alleged stonewalling.
Now the monitor is out — and the city will no longer control the jails until conditions are improved.
“The continued existence of extremely dangerous and unsafe conditions led the Court to hold Defendants in contempt of a staggering eighteen provisions of the Nunez Court Orders and indicates that the Department has not yet taken the bold steps required to move the jails toward safety levels that comply with the Constitution,” the judge wrote.
Mayor Eric Adams tried to downplay the stunning snatching of power and pointed the finger at progressive laws that have barred the city from investing in infrastructure on Rikers.
“We’ve talked about Rikers over and over again,” Hizzoner said during his weekly news conference. “The problems on Rikers were decades in the making. If a federal judge made a determination that we did something they didn’t like, then we are going to follow the rules.”
After the DOC was found to be in contempt last November, city lawyers suggested that current jails commissioner, Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, could serve a dual role as a compliance officer as an alternative to giving up control.
But the judge went to lengths describing how the last nine years of hand-holding by a federal monitor — a court-appointed team of experts who offered hundreds of suggestions and plans for reform — had only resulted in more violence at Rikers.
She rejected the idea that anything but total independent control could produce results at this point.
“The factors, as a whole, strongly support the appointment of an individual, independent of the City’s governance structure, with appropriate powers, commensurate to those of a receiver, to address Defendants’ noncompliance with the Contempt Provisions,” Swain wrote.
Attorneys representing the incarcerated plaintiffs in the class action case, first filed in 2011, praised the judge for the “historic decision to appoint an independent receiver to end the culture of brutality in the City’s jails.”
“This decision confirms what we have long argued: transformative change in the City’s jails can only occur under the leadership of an independent authority, unbound by the bureaucratic and political forces that have stifled progress for decades,” said Mary Lynne Werlwas of Legal Aid, and Debra Greenberger, partner at the law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, in a joint statement.
Swain’s sweeping order contains a scathing critique of the city’s jail system and their failure to comply with court orders in the nine years since a settlement agreement was reached.
The “unprecedented rates of use of force and violence, have become normalized despite the fact that they are clearly abnormal and unacceptable,” Swain wrote.
Swain repeatedly chastised city jail officials for their failure to make any “substantial reduction in the risk of harm facing those who live and work in the Rikers Island jails,” despite nine years of judicial hand-holding from the appointed monitor.
The use of force remained higher than in 2015 – a level then that prompted the historic settlement to reform Rikers – even considering the increasingly “unreliable” staffs’ reporting of serious events, she wrote.
The federal judge at points could barely constrain her frustration at the city’s obstinance.
One paragraph under the heading “Bad Faith” simply defines the term and asks if it applies to Rikers.
“Here, that is clearly the case,” the judge concluded.
The order isn’t entirely bad news for the city’s jail system.
Some praise is reserved for current jail commissioner, Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, whom Mayor Adams appointed in late 2023. The judge noted that the monitor described her as “dedicated to working collaboratively with the monitor,” and “committed to reform.”
But it’s too little, too late, she argued.
Even the promise of effective leadership is “not sufficient to tip this factor against the appointment of a receiver,” Swain wrote, adding that conditions are still “dangerous and unsafe.”
Once the manager is appointed, they will have three years to “promptly achieve substantial compliance with the contempt provisions,” during which the manager “shall be answerable only to the court.”
The order states that the “transformative and sustainable initiatives” must lay out specific benchmarks to be reached in annual intervals, and that safety must be addressed first.
The specifics of the manager’s total control are also listed in detail, itemizing their power to control all functions of the DOC, from personnel to administrative tasks and beyond.
City politicians have long argued for the troubled jail to be shuttered entirely, with some accusing Mayor Adams of stalling a “borough-based” jail plan.
“Under Mayor Adams’ administration, staff and those incarcerated at Rikers have suffered from an increase in violence and worsening humanitarian conditions, leading to dozens of New Yorkers dying on the island,” said Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, no relation to the mayor.
“The federal court’s decision to appoint a remediation manager to oversee changes on Rikers reflects the mayoral administration’s failure to adhere to the Nunez Court Orders and convince the court of meaningful progress to make the jails safer.”
Corrections officers have previously argued that a federal takeover of the jail system would result in “chaos,” but the union said in a statement Tuesday that they were ready to work with the future manager.
“We are willing to work productively with whomever is ultimately appointed the Remediation Manager, while maintaining our fierce advocacy for the preservation of our members’ employment rights and improving their working conditions,” said COBA President Benny Boscio.
The statement cites “significant staffing shortages” as an “unprecedented challenge.”
Swain discusses staffing under a section called “Wasted Resources,” calling the jail system “overstaffed and underserved,” and says there are ample examples of “the Department’s mismanagement of one of the richest staffing ratios in the county.”
Swain gave the city and advocates an Aug. 29 deadline to recommend potential candidates.
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