Federal judge tells New York City to brace for Rikers takeover

A federal judge has ordered New York City to draw up plans to transfer management of the Rikers Island prison complex to a third party after finding the city’s Department of Corrections (DOC) in civil contempt for failing to comply more than a dozen requirements to improve conditions in violence-ridden prisons.

In one opinion and order Issued Tuesday, Chief U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York Laura Taylor Swain wrote that she was “inclined to impose a receivership” after finding that violence and death inside Rikers have not improved since New York City agreed to court-enforced reform plans for 2015.

In fact, “use of force and other forms of violence, self-harm, and deaths in custody are demonstrably worse,” Swain wrote.

Swain found the DOC in contempt of 18 different provisions of the consent agreement. That agreement was the result of a class-action lawsuit filed in 2012 by the Legal Aid Society of New York, alleging guards’ rampant brutality against inmates. In one press releasethe Legal Aid Society praised the court’s “historic decision” to find the DOC in contempt.

“Rikers Island’s culture of cruelty has resisted judicial and political reform for years,” the Legal Aid Society said. “As the court found, the city has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to provide the supervision necessary to ensure the safety of all individuals housed in local jails.”

In recent years, chronic violence, corruption and negligence within Rikers have risen to record levels. The crisis at Rikers has been one of the most high-profile examples of bureaucratic indifference to unconstitutional suffering in jails and prisons across the country. Losing control of Rikers would be a huge embarrassment for New York City, but it would come after years of active resistance by city officials and prison guard unions to efforts to clean up the island’s jail.

In 2021, a judge in New York State ordered a pretrial inmate released from Rikers after he presented credible video evidence that he had been forced to perform at a ‘fight night’ organized by gang leaders while guards looked on. A senator from New York State said lawmakers touring Rikers that same year saw a man trying to commit suicide. A public defender who toured the jail told Intercepting it that prisoners in a segregated intake unit were locked in small showers and given plastic bags to defecate in.

The court-appointed monitoring team repeatedly documented widespread security lapses, failure to assist inmates who attempted suicide in plain sight of officers, and a small rotation of guards working double and triple shifts.

Although New York City has opposed placing Rikers in receivership, it largely did not challenge the Legal Aid Society’s arguments in court filings that it was in contempt of the consent agreement. That wasn’t possible either. Swain concluded that the plain facts showed that the DOC had failed to reduce the daily violence, excessive force, poor conditions and lax suicide protocols in its prisons.

“The record in this case makes clear that those who live and work in Rikers Island prisons face serious and imminent threats of danger, as well as actual harm, on a daily basis as a direct result of Defendants’ lack of diligence. , and that the corrective efforts undertaken by the Court, the Monitoring Team and the parties to date have not been effective in mitigates this danger,” Swain wrote.

Swan had previously rejected calls from the Legal Aid Society to place Rikers under federal receivership to allow time to implement leadership changes at the DOC, but Swain wrote this week that she has lost confidence that the court can trust the city to works in good faith:

“The past nine years also leave no doubt that continued insistence on compliance with the Court’s orders by persons primarily accountable to the political authorities would only lead to confrontation and delay; that the current management structure and current staffing levels are insufficient to turn the tide within a reasonable period. that defendants have consistently failed to comply with court orders for years, sometimes under circumstances indicative of bad faith, and that vast resources — which the city is devoting to a system that is simultaneously overstaffed and understaffed; not used effectively.”

Swain has directed the court’s monitoring team and both sides in the lawsuit to prepare memos by January 14, 2025, including proposed frameworks for a third-party receivership of Rikers, along with legal arguments for or against.