With new DOC commish, mayor says reforms are coming

The mayor promised New Yorkers Rikers will be closed and solitary confinement will end with the new appointment of Vincent Schiraldi. Photo by Seth Wenig/AP

By Jacob Kaye

With a new Department of Corrections commissioner in place, Mayor Bill de Blasio doubled down on his promises to end solitary confinement and close Rikers Island Friday.

“We’re ending solitary confinement, period,” de Blasio said on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show. “And we’re going to get off Rikers once and for all.” 

The mayor tapped Vincent Schiraldi to lead the DOC through the reforms the mayor has hoped to tackle since he took office eight years ago. Schiraldi, who previously worked as a senior advisor in de Blasio’s Office of Criminal Justice, was made the new commissioner after Cynthia Brann announced her retirement from the post this week. 

Brann’s retirement came hours before the publishing of a report from the state monitor that found the use-of-force rate by corrections officers against inmates hit a five-year high in the second half of 2020. 

Despite the turmoil facing the DOC, de Blasio said Schiraldi is the perfect person to take on the job. 

“It’s a very tough environment in [the DOC], especially after COVID,” the mayor said. “We wanted someone who was really experienced but is also committed to constantly creating a more humane and redemption oriented atmosphere.”

De Blasio defended Brann on Friday, crediting her for mitigating the spread of COVID-19 in correctional facilities and working to end solitary confinement, something criminal justice advocates say isn’t actually ending despite the mayor’s promises. 

The Board of Correction, the body that oversees the city’s jails, introduced new units to serve as an alternative to solitary confinement earlier this year. The units are designed as caged areas where incarcerated individuals would spend 10 hours of the day. Unlike solitary confinement, the units allow for limited social interaction and more sunlight. 

“Being locked in these cages alone for 24 hours a day is nothing more than solitary confinement by another name,” Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas said after visiting the units on Rikers last week.

But the mayor promised Friday that large-scale reform would come soon enough, even as the end of his term is fast approaching. 

“In just a few years...there will no longer be a Rikers Island facility,” de Blasio said. “The big changes can and will work.”