Rikers receivership proceedings begin
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Federal Judge Laura Swain, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York said that she would consider putting Rikers Island into a receivership on Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Eagle file photo by Max Parrott
By Jacob Kaye
The city came closer than it has ever been to having its control over Rikers Island stripped away on Thursday after a federal judge said that she’d consider installing a federal receiver in the coming months.
Inside her Manhattan courtroom on Thursday, federal Judge Laura Swain heard the earliest arguments for and against the installation of a federal receiver, or a third-party authority that could, should Swain order it, take complete control over the management of the city’s notorious jail complex where over two dozen people have died in the last two years.
At various points during the highly-anticipated hearing, she called the current state of affairs inside the city’s jails “tragic” and “unacceptable,” and pushed back against claims made by Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina that the jail complex was getting safer.
“Turning Rikers around has never presented an easy task,” Swain said. “Although some progress is being made, it's not being made at a rate that is commensurate with the perils that are being presented.”
“The people incarcerated at Rikers are at a grave risk of immediate harm,” the judge added.
At the end of the two-hour hearing, Swain granted a motion from the Legal Aid Society and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who together represent the plaintiffs in the decade-old civil rights case Nunez v. the City of New York, calling for the city to be held in contempt for failing to tamp down violent conditions in the jail complex. As a relief for the complaint, the public defense firm and U.S. attorney called for Swain to institute a receiver.
On Thursday, Swain, who previously rejected an attempt by the Legal Aid Society to begin receivership proceedings last year, noted the gravity of the extraordinary measure but said that she would begin to consider it.
“I have authorized this motion practice because the defendants have not yet shown me that they are willing to make the rapid and radical change necessary [to make Rikers safe],” Swain said.
Her ruling came despite testimony from Molina, who claimed that under both his and Mayor Eric Adams’ leadership, the jail complex and the agency has become far more functional and safe than they have been under previous administrations.
But Swain was not convinced, and said instead that she was troubled by Molina’s reported combative approach to oversight and collaboration with Steve J. Martin, the federal monitor appointed by the court to serve as its eyes and ears inside Rikers Island and the department in 2015.
At multiple points during Thursday’s conference, members of the monitoring team, the Legal Aid Society and the U.S. attorney’s office described the DOC’s willingness to participate with the monitor as being at an all-time low, and urged for the judge to consider the contempt of court motion.
“The defendants have not demonstrated by action sufficient willingness or ability to engage productively with the monitoring team,” Swain said at the close of the hearing.
Though Swain granted the contempt and receivership motions – both of which she will not issue a ruling on until next year at the earliest – she said that she had “not given up” on the Department of Correction or the Adams administration.
A federal judge said that she would allow federal receivership proceedings to begin, taking the city closer to the possibility of losing its control over Rikers Island. Eagle Photo by Jacob Kaye
“The defendants should take the next few months as a challenge to prove that they…are doing what the taxpayers trust them to do,” Swain said. “I will be watching and the people of this city…will be watching.”
Both Martin and Deputy Monitor Anna Friedberg painted a grim picture of Rikers Island in recent weeks and months on Thursday, and said that the DOC had not been faithfully following its “action plan,” a document that was created last year in an effort to stave off receivership proceedings.
Earlier this week, members of the City Council’s “Common Sense Caucus,” which include several Queens members, took a tour of the jail alongside Molina. During a press conference after the tour, Queens Councilmember Robert Holden described Rikers as having a “great atmosphere.”
Referencing the councilmembers’ trip, Friedberg said on Thursday that during the controlled visit, a number of dangerous incidents were taking place throughout the complex.
On the day the lawmakers made their visit, there were 67 incidents in total, including 29 use of force incidents, four stabbings, 12 fights, seven fires, two serious injuries, 10 detainees expressing a desire to commit self harm, two doses of Narcan administered, 9 assaults on staff, and multiple lock ins, according to the deputy monitor. Also, correctional officers recovered 9 grams of cocaine, nearly 2 grams of fentanyl, 17 pills of Prozac and 18 pills of Ambien.
“This was only one day at Rikers Island,” Friedberg said.
But it wasn’t just this week, according to the monitoring team, the Legal Aid Society and federal prosecutors.
“At its core, this is an agency in which the staff and supervisors are permitted to abdicate their basic correctional duties with impunity,” said Mary Lynne Werlwas, the director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society.
Molina pushbacked against the claims that conditions on Rikers had not improved much in the past decade.
Though he said that the DOC’s “work is far from complete,” he touted a decrease in the number of staff calling out sick on a daily basis and a decrease in stabbings and slashings. Ultimately, he attempted to convince Swain that he and Adams were best suited to turn the jail around, and not a federal receiver.
“No receiver will come into the New York City Department of Correction and induce greater reform at a faster pace than what we have accomplished and continue to accomplish every day,” he said.
In a statement issued after Swain’s ruling, Werlwas said that she “was looking forward to demonstrating the urgent need for the appointment of a receiver to protect our incarcerated clients’ safety, well-being and constitutional rights.”
The installation of a receiver and what their authority may look like will likely not be known until the late winter or early spring of next year.
The parties will meet in the coming weeks and attempt to reach an agreement outside of court – a possibility even Swain suggested was slim on Thursday – before Sept. 11.
Should they not reach an agreement, Swain ordered the Legal Aid Society to submit its opening briefs on the contempt and receivership charge by Nov. 17. The city will have until Jan. 16, 2024 to submit its response and the plaintiffs will have until Feb. 15, 2024 to reply to the city.
At that point, Swain will consider and make a decision on the motion.
The next appearance in the case will take place on Nov. 28.
