While 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 MoreThe powerful union representing correctional officers on Rikers Island this week asked a federal judge to "reassess" the recent hiring of an ex-Department of Correction investigator tapped by the remediation manager to reprise her role in the city’s jail complex.
Read More“Community-based alternatives to incarceration and post-release reentry programs are proving every day that public safety and decarceration are not competing goals.”
Read MoreA former Queens Defenders attorney who was wrongfully accused of smuggling drugs into Rikers Island is suing the city and the correctional officers’ union who levied the accusations against him, alleging he was unlawfully detained and defamed so the union could score political points.
Read MoreThe dispute over the existence of “deadlocking,” or the practice of locking up detainees on Rikers Island for weeks or months at a time in violation of Department of Correction policy, cutting them off from health care, services and other people in custody, continued during a jail oversight meeting on Tuesday.
Read MoreThe 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 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 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.
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