By Joseph Ax
(Reuters) – A federal judge on Tuesday said she is taking control of New York’s troubled Rikers Island jail complex away from city officials and appointing an independent official to oversee it, citing a decade of worsening violent and dangerous conditions inside the facility.
In a 77-page decision, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan said she would select a “remediation manager,” reporting directly to her, who will have broad powers to reform Rikers, including authority to revise the jails’ rules, hire staff and take disciplinary actions against employees who violate policies on the use of force.
“As the record in this case demonstrates, the current rates of use of force, stabbings and slashings, fights, assaults on staff, and in-custody deaths remain extraordinarily high, and there has been no substantial reduction in the risk of harm currently facing those who live and work in the Rikers Island jails,” Swain wrote.
The Legal Aid Society and the law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, which represented inmates in the case, said in a statement, “This appointment marks a critical turning point — an overdue acknowledgment that city leadership has proven unable to protect the safety and constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals.”
Speaking to reporters after an event on Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams noted that the problems at Rikers have been decades in the making and said he had taken steps, including appointing a new corrections commissioner in 2023, to improve conditions at the complex.
“I’m going to follow whatever rules she puts in place, because she has the authority to do so,” he said of Swain’s decision.
Tuesday’s ruling comes six months after Swain found the city and its Department of Correction in contempt of 18 provisions of court orders designed to improve the violent conditions facing inmates and staff.
The city agreed in 2015 to have a court-appointed monitor keep tabs on Rikers and issue regular reports on its conditions, part of a consent decree to settle a class-action lawsuit.
There were 6,784 incidents of use of force at Rikers in 2023, up from 4,652 in 2016, and 33 people have died in custody since 2022, according to figures the judge cited in November.
Rikers housed more than 6,000 inmates as of mid-2023, one-fifth of whom suffered from serious mental illness, according to an investigation that year by the city comptroller’s office.
The City Council has previously approved a plan to close Rikers by 2027 and open four new city jails elsewhere, but the city is not on track to complete the new facilities by the deadline.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Sandra Maler)
