The commissioner of the Department of Correction on Tuesday defended a nearly 600-officer cut proposed by the mayor, despite asking the City Council for more funds to hire and recruit officers only a couple of months ago.
Read MoreTwo detainees died on Rikers Island in quick succession of each other on Monday and Tuesday as the jail’s top officials were across the Atlantic, touring jails in Europe.
Read MoreInvestigations into alleged abuses by Rikers Island officers will no longer be handled by the Department of Correction, according to a new organizational structure that puts a court-appointed remediation manager in charge of probing misconduct inside the jails.
Read MoreOne-on-one with city’s new close Rikers czar Dana Kaplan.
Read MoreThe City Council this week demanded the Department of Correction answer long-ignored questions about how it's changed – or hasn’t changed – its often criticized process for fielding and addressing complaints detainees make about conditions on Rikers Island.
Read MoreThe city has agreed to pay nearly $5.2 million to the families of two men who died on Rikers Island of methadone overdoses, including one man from Queens whose family said the Department of Correction hid information about their loved one’s death.
Read MoreThe city blew past a legal deadline Friday to release a detailed plan for closing Rikers Island, leaving its long-delayed effort to shutter the dangerous jail complex without a clear path forward.
Read MoreThe city’s Department of Correction may soon begin to implement parts of a local law banning solitary confinement in the city’s jails, nearly two and a half years after the bill was first passed.
Read MoreThe city has appointed its first-ever “close Rikers czar,” tasking a longtime criminal justice reformer with getting its long-delayed plan to shutter the troubled jail complex back on track.
Read MoreThe final beam was placed Wednesday atop the $3 billion Brooklyn borough-based jail, which will one day be the first facility to be completed as part of New York City’s long-delayed plan to close Rikers Island.
Read MoreCity Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers’ first visit to Rikers Island came shortly after her election in 2021, when the jails were in an acute state of crisis.
Read MoreThe city on Wednesday will welcome patients to a long-delayed jail ward at Bellevue Hospital, finally putting to use a 104-bed unit that has sat unused since early 2025.
Read MoreAdvocates are urging the Mamdani administration to transfer a long-vacant Rikers Island jail facility out of Department of Correction control, saying the city must revive a jail decommissioning process that came to a complete halt under former Mayor Eric Adams.
Read MoreThe Department of Correction has stonewalled a court monitor looking for answers about fire safety practices in the city’s jails, even as more than 40 fires were started by detainees over the last weeks of 2025, according to a new report.
Read MoreA 49-year-old man from Queens awaiting trial on Rikers Island died on Sunday, becoming the second detainee in the troubled jail complex to die in the last week.
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