Christopher Watler will lead the Board of Correction’s oversight of Rikers Island at a time of major change – and continued troubles – for the city’s criminal justice system.
Read MoreThe federal monitor tracking conditions on Rikers Island said the dangerous jail has remained mired in dysfunction and constitutional violations a little more than six months after a federal judge stripped the city of its control of the jail complex and appointed a remediation manager to lead the reform effort.
Read MoreNearly two years after a social worker first alleged that correctional officers on Rikers Island regularly locked up detainees suffering from mental health issues for weeks or months at a time – cutting them off from healthcare, programming and other people in custody – the debate over the existence of the practice, known as “deadlocking,” continued during a City Council hearing Wednesday.
Read MoreA 20-year-old man died in Department of Correction custody inside Queens Criminal Court on Wednesday.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreAfter months of praising a shift toward greater transparency at the Department of Correction, the federal watchdog overseeing Rikers Island sharply changed course Thursday, accusing agency leadership of taking steps that could undermine court-ordered reforms.
Read MoreThe City Council is currently drafting a bill to extend the deadline to close Rikers and replace it with four borough-based jails
Read MoreA 41-year-old man who had been held on Rikers Island for over two years was pronounced dead on Tuesday morning.
Read MoreA man who died while in custody was repeatedly ignored by both correctional officers and hospital staff when he tried to voice concerns about his health, a new lawsuit filed on Monday claims.
Read MoreA man being held in a new Bellevue Hospital jail unit for detainees with serious medical needs died on Wednesday, becoming the sixth person to die in Department of Correction custody this year.
Read MoreTwo new lawsuits allege that the city’s Department of Correction illegally kept Rikers Island detainees indoors without access to outdoor recreation time for weeks on end, wreaking havoc on detainees’ mental and physical health.
Read MoreThe Independent Rikers Commission is hoping to remind New Yorkers why the city first began to endeavor closing its dangerous jail complex, even if it has no shot at hitting the legally-mandated 2027 deadline to do so.
Read MoreRikers Island’s power remediation manager issued his much-anticipated first report this week, detailing his plans to begin to curb the violence that has plagued the city’s jails for decades.
Read MoreAfter former Mayor Eric Adams stalled on a key element of the plan to close Rikers Island, the Mamdani administration on Monday reversed course, transferring three jail facilities out of Department of Correction control and reviving a jail decommissioning process required by city law.
Read MoreCases are moving faster through New York’s courts, reducing the amount of time defendants have to wait on Rikers Island – but a number of entrenched obstacles could make even quicker case processing difficult to achieve, the state’s top administrative judge warned last week.
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