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 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 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 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 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 MoreA 39-year-old man died on Rikers Island on Thursday, marking the first death in the dangerous jail complex this year and the first since Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office.
Read MoreThe city still doesn’t have a timeline to open an already-constructed hospital jail ward meant to hold detainees with serious physical illness, despite new leadership in City Hall and the Department of Correction, who say they are fully committed to reversing the massive delay.
Read MoreThe court-appointed remediation manager responsible for addressing the deeply rooted dysfunction and violence on Rikers Island is expected to cost taxpayers nearly $10 million for his first full year of work.
Read MoreA library at the women’s jail on Rikers Island reopened this week after the resource had been shut down for nearly a year as correction officials struggled to manage a swelling jail population caused by a state prison staffing crisis.
Read MoreCity Hall last week unveiled a plan it says will finally bring the city into compliance with long-suspended jail oversight rules and a local law banning solitary confinement on Rikers Island.
Read MoreStanley Richards, the new DOC commissioner, sat down with the Eagle to discuss the critical moment the city, the DOC and its jails are in, as well as his philosophical approach to leading the department, how he’ll measure his performance, how he’ll address the growing number of deaths in the jails last year, and more.
Read MoreMayor Zohran Mamdani on Saturday appointed Stanley Richards, the former head of The Fortune Society, to serve as the city’s next commissioner of the Department of Correction.
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