City Council asks judge to protect their power over Rikers ahead of receivership ruling
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The City Council, led by Speaker Adrienne Adams, called on a federal judge not to strip the City Council of its powers over Rikers Island and the Department of Correction should the judge choose to put the jail complex into a receivership. File photo by Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit
By Jacob Kaye
If a federal judge follows through with her threat to strip the city of its control of Rikers Island, she should make sure plans to shutter the dangerous jail complex by 2027 remain in place, attorneys with the City Council said in a court filing this week.
In a letter to federal Judge Laura Swain, the City Council called on Swain to ensure that the city’s legislative body retain its oversight and budgetary powers over the Department of Correction and the city’s jails should the judge take the extreme measure of putting Rikers into the hands of a receiver.
The Council, which has yet to take a hard stance on whether or not they believe a receiver should be appointed, said that they are particularly concerned that the legally-mandated closure of Rikers may fall by the wayside should the city lose control of at least some parts of the management of the jails.
“We request that if a receiver is appointed, the receiver’s powers and goals should all align with — and further — the legally-mandated closure of Rikers,” City Council attorney Jason Otaño said in the letter to Swain. “In particular, we urge that the Court select a receiver who is capable of both addressing the urgent needs of people in custody and building more effective practices and systems that can be transferred to the new borough-based jails.”
The letter from the Council comes as Swain has begun weighing not only if a receiver should be appointed as a last ditch effort to quell the violent conditions on Rikers, but also what a receiver may look like. Swain said she was “inclined” to implement a receivership in November after finding the city in contempt of 18 provisions of the 2015 consent judgment stemming from the ongoing detainee rights case known and Nunez v. the City of New York.
In competing proposals submitted to Swain last month, the city and a coalition comprising of the Legal Aid Society, federal prosecutors and private attorneys with Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP outlined the powers they think a receiver should have, and what sort of qualifications the person who holds the post should possess.
While the Legal Aid Society, federal prosecutors and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel said a receiver should be an outside authority without any past connection to the Department of Correction, the city attempted to argue that current DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie should be given the dual role of commissioner and “compliance director,” a title that would give her all the powers a receiver may otherwise have.
The city’s proposal drew scrutiny from advocates, lawmakers and the New York City Bar Association, which submitted a formal argument in favor of the Legal Aid Society’s receivership proposal to Swain last week.
“Only an independent receiver, free from conflicting interests, pressures, and the instability that inevitably arises from changing administrations will be able to bring the DOC into compliance with the rule of law,” the NYCBA said in an amicus brief filed jointly with the Vera Institute for Justice.
Also opposed to the city’s compliance director plan was the Council, which said in its letter that should Swain lean toward receivership, she should create one in line with what the Legal Aid Society proposed.
“If the remedy to cure the unconstitutional conditions in the jails includes the appointment of a receiver, it is imperative that the receiver be independent of the mayor and mayoral administration,” Otaño said in the letter. “Any appointed receiver, if deemed necessary, certainly should not be from the DOC leadership that has failed to address the conditions that warrant the intervention.”
Still, the Council refrained from firmly calling on the judge to strip the city of its full control of Rikers.
“We share the court’s concerns over inhumane conditions in our city jails that have persisted for decades,” Otaño wrote. “It is our hope that the remedies imposed to cure the Department of Correction’s contempt in the Nunez case will serve to build institutional capacity and act as a bridge towards finally closing Rikers Island.”
Leadership of the Council have been timid in the past to express full-throated support of receivership, which they’ve long maintained could interfere with their efforts to govern the jails.
“It's essentially a very big gamble,” City Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who chairs the Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice, told the Eagle last year. “If the city loses its ability to control its own jails, and situations continue to be horrible, particularly on Rikers, this can blow up in everyone's face.”
“On the other hand, if what is needed to cut through the current administration of our city jails is a federal takeover of them, then that's what has to happen,” she added.
Neither the Legal Aid Society nor the city made mention of the City’s Council’s powers in their separate receivership proposals.
However, the Council’s power to legislate the jails and the consent judgment in the Nunez case have already clashed.
In January, Swain’s court-appointed monitor in the case, Steve J. Martin, issued a report recommending a law banning solitary confinement in the jails not be enacted until “problematic components” of the bill be changed. Martin claimed that the law would come into direct interference with the city’s ability to stick to the requirements of the consent judgement.
Should Swain put a receiver in charge of Rikers, they would also likely have to contend with the city’s plan to close Rikers, which is expected to play out in somewhat dramatic fashion over the next half decade.
The city is currently wildly off track of its plan to close Rikers by 2027 – the four borough-based jails meant to replace Rikers aren’t currently all expected to be completed until 2032. Though Mayor Eric Adams has effectively stopped enforcing the plan, he has claimed on countless occasions that his administration will “follow the law” when it comes to Rikers’ closure.
He also ordered the commission behind the first plan to shut Rikers to reconvene and craft a new plan, which he presumably will commit to following once it's completed. Though the commission was originally expected to release their recommendations in December, it now is unclear when a new plan will be presented.
Regardless, advocates applauded the Council’s commitment to the closure plan outlined in their letter to Swain.
“Katal and our partners have been fighting for over two years to get the City Council to weigh in on federal receivership at Rikers,” Yonah Zeitz, an advocacy director of the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice, said in a statement. “The Council’s letter to the court indicates that our sustained organizing has worked.”
“Should a receiver be appointed, we urge the Council to exercise their oversight authority now to hold Mayor Adams accountable to shutting down Rikers,” Zeitz added.
