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.
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 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 MoreWhile the federal monitor tasked with tracking conditions on Rikers Island appears optimistic about the leadership of the two new officials in charge of the city’s jails, violence in the troubled complex remains high, the monitor said in a new report.
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 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 MoreAs a federal judge continues to consider taking Rikers Island out of the city’s control, a jail expert hired by the city says that current Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie should remain in charge of the violent jail complex.
Read MoreThe monitor appointed by a judge to track violence in the city’s notorious jail complex said in a highly-anticipated report last week that a yet-to-be-implemented city law banning solitary confinement would “only exacerbate the current dangerous conditions” on Rikers Island.
Read MoreCity Hall late Friday told a federal judge that she should look no further than the current Department of Correction commissioner should she choose to strip the city of its control of Rikers Island and hand the notorious jail complex over to a receiver.
Read MorePart two of the Eagle’s deep dive into the history of Rikers and how it may impact the troubled jail complex’s future.
Read MoreAs a federal judge considers taking Rikers Island out of the city’s control and handing it to a court-appointed receiver, the Eagle is looking back at the history of the city’s troubled jail complex in an effort to understand how the city arrived at this critical moment.
Read MoreIf at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again. That’s the platitude Mayor Eric Adams has appeared to employ in his attempts to skirt around a new law banning solitary confinement in the city’s jails.
Read MoreFor the first time in nearly seven months, the city’s Department of Correction on Tuesday appeared before the federal judge currently considering whether or not the city should be stripped of its control of Rikers Island, the troubled jail complex that has seen over two dozen deaths in the past two years.
Read MoreDespite the city’s instance that if given more time it can turn around its troubled jail complex on Rikers Island, the Legal Aid Society said in a Thursday court filing that enough was enough, and reiterated its call for a federal judge to strip control of the jail from the city and hand it over to a court-appointed authority.
Read MoreA federal judge found the Department of Correction in contempt of court on Thursday after it failed to communicate with the federal monitor about the opening of a secure housing unit in November.
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