City will remain in control of Rikers after judge accepts action plan
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A federal judge ruled this week that the city’s action plan to address the dysfunction on Rikers Island is acceptable, pushing back the possibility of a federal receivership. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
Mayor Eric Adams and his Department of Corrections commissioner, Louis Molina, will remain in control of Rikers Island for at least several months longer, a federal judge ruled this week.
Laura Taylor Swain, the chief judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, said that the action plan submitted by the city, which details its plan to curtail violence and improve conditions inside the city’s troubled jail complex was sufficient, in a ruling issued Tuesday afternoon.
In doing so, she denied requests from The Legal Aid Society, representing the incarcerated population on Rikers Island in the case, to find the DOC and the city in contempt of previous court orders.
The Legal Aid Society declined to comment.
The ruling also staves off the installation of a federal receivership, a move that could potentially see the city’s right to run Rikers rescinded and placed in the hands of a federal authority. A federal receivership will be off the table at least until the fall.
“This action plan represents a way to move forward with concrete measures now to address the ongoing crisis at Rikers Island,” Swain said in the decision. “The Court has approved the proposed measures contained with the action plan, in full recognition that further remedial relief may be necessary should defendants not fulfill their commitments and demonstrate their ability to make urgently needed changes.”
The action plan, which the city submitted on Friday, got the tentative approval of Steve Martin, the federal monitor appointed to oversee the DOC in 2015 and who aided the department in crafting the plan. Attorneys for the Legal Aid Society said that while there were a number of worthy goals in the plan, they questioned the DOC’s ability to implement it, citing years of failed goals to make the jail safer for those who work and who are incarcerated there.
Molina, who has led the DOC since Adams took office in January, said that he was “immensely grateful to the court for endorsing our Action Plan and extending our time to implement even more positive change.”
“I came to this department with a mission to transform this city’s jails into the safest, most humane correctional system in the United States because I believe it can be done,” Molina said in a statement to the Eagle. “We will continue to work with the Monitor, the Mayor, and across city agencies to keep improving conditions.”
“I also want to acknowledge all the uniform and non-uniform personnel who have been working tirelessly to implement change,” he added. “The improvements we have been seeing mostly come from their hard work on the ground.”
Staffing issues among correctional officers are at the center of the city’s plan to turn around the dysfunctional jail complex. Staffing issues have also been at the center of pleas from the Legal Aid Society, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams and advocates to bring in a federal receivership.
Dating back to the summer of last year, thousands of uniformed correctional officers have been out each day on either sick leave, medical monitoring or because they have gone AWOL. The absences have been a major contributing factor in a majority of in-custody deaths to occur this year, according to a recent report from the Board of Correction, the oversight body of the DOC.
Last year, 16 incarcerated people died while in DOC custody, marking an eight-year high. This year, six people have died while in custody.
In a letter to the court last week, city attorney Kimberly Joyce said the agency was beginning to reign in its staffing crisis by upping the number of home visits it makes to officers’ houses who don’t come into work. The DOC says it has also begun to take more punitive measures against officers who ditch shifts – 52 officers have been suspended since May 1 for going AWOL.
Joyce added that there has been a 40 percent reduction in staff absenteeism this year – around 980 uniformed officers are calling out sick on average daily, the first time the average has been below 1,000 in months.
This week’s judicial decision was celebrated by the Correctional Officers Benevolent Association, the union representing correctional officers.
“With regards to a Federal receivership, COBA advocated for months that we didn’t need to outsource the management of our jails and instead, the focus should be on improving working conditions and enhancing safety in the jails, and that a Federal Receiver would only take us backwards,” Benny Boscio, the union’s president, said in a statement. “Today, Federal Judge Laura Swain agreed.”
“In just a matter of months, we went from defeating former Mayor de Blasio’s efforts to privatize our jails, by scapegoating us for his mismanagement with his frivolous lawsuit against our union, to defeating a Federal receivership for now,” he added. “Moving forward, we will use every resource at our disposal to protect and defend the rights of all our members.”
Martin and the federal monitoring team said in a communication to the court last week that while they support the plan, they question the DOC’s ability to implement it.
“While the action plan certainly is a viable pathway forward, the monitoring team must acknowledge that given the decades of mismanagement, quagmire of bureaucracy, and limited proficiencies of many of the people who must lead the necessary transformation, serious concerns remain about whether the city and department are capable of fully and faithfully implementing this action plan with integrity,” the monitor wrote in a letter to Swain.
“This combined with the monitoring team’s serious concerns about the current conditions of the jails means the monitoring team cannot warrant that the action plan alone will be sufficient to address the danger, violence, and chaos that continue to occur daily,” Martin added.
Proponents of the federal receivership, which include former DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi, say that the court order would allow the city and the DOC to bypass a law that prevents them from hiring people for management positions who aren’t already part of the DOC, in addition to another of expanded powers.
Receiverships have been successfully implemented in California and Chicago correctional facilities in recent years, advocates say, and ordering one for Rikers could go a long way to aid the city in its efforts to improve the jail complex’s conditions.
“I think that it's hard not to come to the conclusion that Rikers would benefit from the appointment of a receiver,” Zachary Carter, who has previously served as New York City corporation counsel, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and as the chairman of the board of the Legal Aid Society, said during a May panel on receiverships hosted by Columbia University.
“Only a receiver can suspend laws and regulations and contracts, including a collective bargaining agreement, that interfere with the implementation of the consent decree, and in correcting the things that the court determined are in need of correction,” Carter added.
What a receivership might look like in New York should it be implemented in the future, is unclear primarily because judges have broad authority to shape a receivership as they see fit to the situation.
For now, the city has won itself a five month extension to prove to the court that its plan will have the desired effects. Swain ordered the federal monitor this week to submit its bi-annual report on the jail and an update on how closely the action plan is being followed in November. Should the report be critical of the DOC’s implementation of the plan, a federal receivership will likely be back on the table.
Adams, who has touted Molina’s ability to lead the DOC throughout the duration of the receivership threat, is adamantly opposed to the installation of a federal receiver. He said he believes the move is indicative of a political failure.
“It says we can’t do our job,” Adams said in May. “What’s next, do we take over our school system? Do we take over the Department of Sanitation?”
“We are responsible to take tax payers dollars and provide goods and services to the people of this city,” he added. “And when you start stating that your city can’t do its job, that’s an indictment of the over 300,000 city employees and all those who are employed on Rikers, and I’m not surrendering this city to anyone who believes we can’t do our jobs.”
Swain’s decision came the same day as the BOC’s monthly meeting, during which its board members ripped into Molina and DOC staff for not providing it information on staffing and for not addressing a number of “frightening” conditions within the jails.
Board member Robert Cohen said that on a recent visit to Rikers, he found that a large number of incarcerated individuals were asking officers for help. Some detainees said they required medical attention and some said that they needed to be taken to a bathroom – a number of bathrooms in the visited facility were broken, Cohen said, leaving detainees no choice but to urinate on the ground.
“The pens were filthy,” Cohen said. “I’ve never seen something as chaotic as this in the department.”
Molina said the conditions were a result of COVID protocols and staffing issues.
Board members also criticized the DOC for continuing to keep incarcerated individuals who have committed acts of violence within the jail inside solitary confinement cells for 23 hours a day.
The city was required by state law to implement the Risk Management Accountability System, a new program to replace solitary confinement, inside Rikers Island last fall. However, starting under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the mayor has passed an executive order each week authorizing the delay of its implementation. The executive order cites staffing issues as the reason behind the delay.
On Tuesday, Molina committed to implementing RMAS on July 1, the deadline he set for himself when he first took office. However, he said a number of the details have yet to be worked out and added that there may be some complications in implementation during the initial weeks of the new system.
“I understand the importance of evolving our restrictive housing model,” Molina told the BOC. “The team and I huddled together and we’re going to give it a go.”
