Judge troubled after DOC leadership accused of attempting to stifle oversight

Federal Judge Laura Swain said Department of Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards appeared to violate several of her orders when he directed top DOC leadership to brief him first before speaking with various oversight figures. AP file photo by Seth Wenig

By Jacob Kaye

A federal judge said that Department of Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards appeared to violate a number of court orders when he issued a recent directive limiting his top deputies from communicating with oversight officials charged with leading reform efforts at Rikers Island.

Federal Judge Laura Swain, who oversees the ongoing detainee rights case known as Nunez v. the City of New York, said that she was troubled by a recent letter written to her by her federal monitor, Steve J. Martin, who is tasked with tracking conditions in the city’s violent jail complex on Rikers Island.

Earlier this month, the monitor said that he had “grave concerns” over Richards’ chief of staff’s request to agency leaders not to communicate their work or jail improvement ideas to the monitor, the recently installed remediation manager, or City Hall without first briefing Richards. The memo, which was sent via email, was not shared with the monitor or remediation manager until it was leaked anonymously to Martin.

Swain, like Martin, said that Richards’ policy change would have stifled transparency and violated court orders that require the DOC to first get permission for such changes and to provide unfettered access to the monitor and Nicholas Deml, the remediation manager appointed by Swain in January to assume major control over the management of Rikers Island and the DOC. Swain installed the remediation manager after ruling in 2024 that the city had failed over the last decade to temper violent conditions in its jails despite a longstanding consent judgment requiring them to do so.

“The [remediation manager] and monitoring teams’ free access to information and their ability to communicate confidentially with staff are more than just technical requirements of the court’s orders; they are indispensable to the critical work of remediation,” Swain said in her Sept. 10 order.

“If implemented, the Instructions would have interfered with the [remediation manager] and monitoring teams’ unfettered access to DOC staff and their ability to confidentially communicate with staff,” she added.

Swain’s order marks the first time the federal judge has expressed concern over the management of the DOC since appointing Deml to take over significant control over the agency.

In the months since Deml took office, Swain, the monitor and the remediation manager have publicly had nothing but praise for Richards, a criminal justice reform-minded commissioner appointed to the post by Mayor Zohran Mamdani at the beginning of the year.

Richards, the first formerly incarcerated person to lead the DOC, began his tenure by touting his commitment to work transparently with the agency’s various oversight figures, including, and especially, Deml.

“My whole approach to management is transparency and partnership,” Richards told the Eagle during a wide-ranging interview in February before he officially began serving as commissioner. “I anticipate being very transparent and in partnership with advocates, community-based service providers and with the public, because I think you can't address something that's in the dark.”

In the same interview, Richards said that before assuming their respective roles, he spoke with Deml about “working together” to address the 18 court orders in the Nunez case under which Swain found the city in contempt in 2024 – the contempt ruling led to the creation of the remediation manager.

“What he said to me, and what I said to him, is that I'm looking forward to this partnership,” Richards said in February. “That’s going to be the seeding that I need to transform the way the department operates, the way the department is seen, the way officers feel and the way incarcerated people experience our department.”

The approach earned early praise from Martin, who said in a June report that he had “observed a positive shift in the approach to working with the monitoring team upon the appointment of the new commissioner.”

But that changed earlier this month after he discovered the memo sent by Richards’ chief of staff.

“In the [monitoring team’s] more than ten years of experience monitoring this department, regardless of their intention, the recent actions of department leadership are among the most specific, direct, and consequential actions the [monitoring team] has observed to undermine the court’s orders and obstruct the flow of information required for the [monitoring team] and [remediation manager’s team] to meet their responsibilities,” the monitor wrote to Swain.

“This is not an isolated failure to comply with the court’s orders, nor is it the product of misunderstanding, inadequate implementation, or bureaucratic dysfunction,” he added. “Rather, it is an affirmative directive from department leadership that, if followed, would impede compliance with the court’s orders and materially interfere with the [monitoring team’s] and [remediation manager team’s] ability to perform their court-ordered responsibilities.”

In response, Swain said that the memo appeared to violate a 2023 judicial order requiring the DOC to “proactively consult with the monitor in advance of promulgating any new policies or procedures that relate to compliance with the Nunez Court orders.”

Swain said the details of the rule itself also appeared to run afoul of her orders, which include full cooperation “with the Nunez remediation manager in the discharge of the Nunez remediation manager’s duties.”

“Lest there be any doubt, the court again reminds the DOC that obligations to collaborate with the monitor and RM are just that: obligations, not suggestions,” Swain said.

“It is therefore the court’s expectation that any efforts the DOC undertakes to improve communication and coordination among its leadership and staff will not impede the DOC’s compliance with its court-ordered obligations; will not interfere with the RM’s and the monitor’s court-ordered authority and responsibilities; and will not degrade in any way the DOC’s cooperation with the RM and the monitor in the essential work of speedy reparation of the dangerous and dysfunctional conditions that pervade the jails,” she added.

According to Martin, Richards’ Sept. 1 directive was immediately rescinded by the remediation manager, who also directed the DOC to “issue clear and unambiguous directions to department leadership and staff regarding their obligations under the Nunez court orders to communicate openly and candidly with the [monitoring team] and [remediation manager’s team].”

Swain will be given an update on the DOC’s response to concerns over the memo at the end of September, according to her order.

The Department of Correction did not respond to request for comment before print time.