Mayor launches task force to fix Rikers
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Mayor Eric Adams announced the formation of a task force to address the conditions on Rikers Island. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye
By Rachel Vick
Less than a week before the city is required to prove to a federal judge that it should remain in control of Rikers Island, Mayor Eric Adams announced the creation of a citywide task force he says will get the dysfunctional jail under control.
Among the task force’s top priorities will be implementing a number of recommendations made by the federal monitor appointed to oversee the jail. Those recommendations are the subject of federal Judge Laura Swain’s ultimatum to the Department of Correction – last month, the judge ordered the DOC and city to present a plan to begin to implement the recommendations or face federal takeover of Rikers.
The task force, which will be made up of representatives from a number of city agencies, will be chaired by Chief Counsel Brendan McGuire and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phillip Banks.
McGuire said the task force will overcome the “legal and bureaucratic hurdles that have prevented meaningful change for decades.”
The group will also include representatives from the DOC, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, the New York City Law Department, the New York City Office of Labor Relations, the New York City Office of Management and Budget, the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services, and the New York City Department of Design and Construction.
“Rikers Island has been mired in dysfunction and plagued by parallel crises for decades. We cannot — and will not — allow that to continue,” Adams said. This interagency task force puts the full weight of city government behind fully and immediately addressing these challenges.”
Advocates fighting against the well-documented poor conditions inside the jails aren’t sold on the administration’s promise to remedy the shortcomings in management, facilities and detainee treatment.
"An executive order telling City agencies to talk to one another and hold more meetings is not action and will not save lives," Legal Aid Society Spokesperson Redmond Haskins told the Eagle.
Sixteen detainees died in DOC custody last year, a six year high. Four people, including Dashawn Carter who hung himself on Saturday, have died in DOC custody in 2022.
Missing from the task force are representatives from the Board of Correction, the body responsible for oversight of the city’s correctional facilities.
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office told the Eagle that though the BOC is not included, the task force will reach out to the oversight body if it needs help implementing its plans.
Earlier this week, the BOC issued a report that blamed the four detainee deaths this year on staffing issues within the DOC. At a BOC meeting on Tuesday, DOC Commissioner Louis Molina deflected blame onto previous mayoral administrations and DOC leaders.
“Instead of addressing these issues head on, this city has systematically disinvested in this jail system,” Molina told the BOC. “Make no mistake, the whole city has had a hand in this failure.”
In her order, Swain gave the agency until 3 p.m. on May 17 to meet with the monitor team, led by Steve J. Martin, to craft and submit a plan to implement Martin’s recommendations.
The order came after United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams requested that the judge take authority of the jail away from the city.
“At this point — more than six years after the consent judgment and after the issuance of three remedial orders designed to remedy the department’s ongoing noncompliance with court-ordered relief — the department and city must commit to taking specific and concrete operational steps and instituting dramatic systemic changes to actually implement the monitor recommendations on an expeditious timeline,” Williams said.
He also said the parties currently responsible for oversight “ought to be required to explain how these efforts will differ from, and are likely to be more fruitful than, the many iterations of prior failed reform initiatives.”
Last week, Adams, for the first time as mayor, visited Rikers Island. Reporters were not allowed on the visit and he reportedly did not speak or meet with any of the detainees housed there.
“He was there to thank and show appreciation for correction officers,” City Hall spokeswoman Kate Smart told the Daily News.
