“For those reasons, the court is inclined to impose a receivership: namely, a remedy that will make the management of the use of force and safety aspects of the Rikers Island jails ultimately answerable directly to the court,” U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain wrote Wednesday. File Photo by Justin Lane/EPA-EFE
Nov. 27 (UPI) — A judge has ruled New York City is officially in contempt over its “grave” conditions at the Rikers Island prison complex, with a federal takeover of the system now seen increasingly as likely in a years-long legal battle, according to new information.
On Wednesday in Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain, in a scathing 65-page order, said the New York City’s Department of Corrections had, in her view, failed to make progress on the mandated reforms under a 2015 decree. That had ordered prison officials to better improve safety standards for staff and inmates in NYC jails — a majority of which get housed on Rikers.
“The use of force rate and other rates of violence, self-harm, and deaths in custody are demonstrably worse than when the Consent Judgment went into effect in 2015,” she wrote.
It holds the administration of Mayor Eric Adams in contempt on all 18 points of the 2015 judgment Swain noted that compelled DOC officials to quell ongoing violent activity and drive down its rate of inmate deaths.
Last year, the embattled mayor stated in July that the administration was “prepared to fully defend against any contempt motion,” adding that “the record will reflect the important and necessary steps New York City has taken to make continued progress” on the worsening conditions on Rikers Island as Swain took early steps at the time to put the system into a federal monitorship.
However, a spokesperson for Adams said Wednesday the administration had no comment.
Meanwhile, the prison population on Rikers is up 4% from last year and held roughly 6,600 inmates at the start of this month, New York Post reported.
Five inmates on Rikers Island were dead by July of last year. In 2022, there were 19 reported deaths and 16 in 2021. However, the city’s Department of Corrections previously had said officials would no longer notify the media when an inmate died in custody as scrutiny over the growing problems in the complex continued to mount.
A 300-page report last year indicated that “some progress” had been made but that court-ordered reform measures “remain incomplete or have not been addressed.” It added that Rikers is a “patently unsafe” facility.
“As the record in this case demonstrates,” the judge wrote Wednesday, “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 added.
Last year’s report noted that the pace of mandated reform had “stagnated instead of accelerated” in a number of its key elements.
In the bombshell move, Swain did order city officials to prep plans for the prison system to be put in a third-party receivership status out of the city’s control. The details of what that will look like for now remain unclear. But a “proposed framework for a receivership” is due by Jan. 14.
However, Swain’s order indicated Adams’ administration will play an active role in who the appointed federal receiver will be to oversee the city’s prison system for it’s extended period of time, and if that person “would supplant or work alongside the DOC commissioner.”
“For those reasons, the court is inclined to impose a receivership: namely, a remedy that will make the management of the use of force and safety aspects of the Rikers Island jails ultimately answerable directly to the court,” according to the court order.
