Law library reopens at Rikers women’s jail after overcrowding forced closure
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The law library in the Rose M. Singer Center of Rikers Island reopened this week after overcrowding in the city’s jails forced the Department of Correction to shutter the resource last year. Photo via DOC/X
By Jacob Kaye
The law library at the women’s jail on Rikers Island reopened this week after the resource had been shut down for nearly a year as correction officials struggled to manage a swelling jail population caused by a state prison staffing crisis.
The Department of Correction closed the library inside the Rose M. Singer Center in May 2025 after moving male detainees into the facility to relieve overcrowding elsewhere on Rikers, limiting movement and programming for women held there.
The population surge stemmed largely from staffing issues inside New York state prisons that began when officers went on an illegal strike at the start of 2025, leaving officials unable to accept newly sentenced people from the city’s jails. As a result, Rikers’ average daily population climbed to more than 7,650 detainees last July, a six-year high.
As state prisons resumed accepting sentenced detainees later in 2025, the jail population declined to roughly 6,800 people, allowing the department to reopen RMSC’s library on Monday.
“Transformation is possible when we reflect on how we present ourselves and what we surround ourselves with — like the books that we read,” DOC Commissioner Stanley Richards said in a statement. “Bringing these resources back to the Rose M. Singer Center creates pathways for growth, and I hope the people in our care find them supportive and enriching.”
The library is new and improved, the DOC said.
The agency opened it in a new space in the facility, moving it closer to classrooms and other areas dedicated to programming. Along with the library, the DOC also reopened a boutique in the jail where women will be able to pick out three outfits they’ll receive for their eventual release.
Conditions in RMSC were strained as Rikers’ population ballooned last year.
In addition to the suspended programming and closure of the law library, movement in the facility was restricted in an effort to ensure that different gendered populations wouldn’t interact with each other.
“People are just unhappy,” City Councilmember Sandy Nurse told the Eagle in July 2025 after she and City Councilmember Gale Brewer called on the governor to quickly address the backlog of state-ready detainees being held on Rikers.
The opening of the new space comes several weeks after Richards officially began his role as DOC commissioner. The former executive director of The Fortune Society, a nonprofit that offers reentry and other services to current and former detainees, has vowed to look for opportunities to increase outside service providers’ presence in the jail system.
Earlier this year, four nonprofits began to provide educational, reentry, therapeutic, and substance misuse programming to detainees, more than two years after the DOC abruptly ended all nonprofit-led social services in the jails. Though the nonprofits’ return was initiated by former DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, Richards advocated for the move prior to his appointment.
The new library will feature an area open to outsider providers to run detainee programming.
“We firmly believe in the change that occurs when we invest in people and in our community,” Deputy Commissioner of the Division of Programs and Community Partnerships Nell Colón said in a statement. “Adding a new space for transcendence through reading, engagement with community providers, and a boutique to set women up for successful reentry matters. It is this investment, this possibility for change, that is the foundation of our work and our values.”
