Over the past four years, an unlikely alliance of advocates for people behind bars and former Department of Correction commissioners joined forces to urge the federal judge overseeing Rikers Island to appoint an outsider to run it.
They argued that it is impossible to turn around the beleaguered department without giving the person in charge more power to make sweeping changes.
Last Tuesday, Laura Taylor Swain, the chief district judge for Manhattan federal court, ruled that she will soon appoint an independent “remediation manager” to enact stalled reforms. Swain specifically said she wasn’t appointing a so-called receiver with nearly endless power, as many had suggested for years.
Nonetheless, the Legal Aid Society, which brought the so-called Nunez case that led to a consent decree in 2015 mandating reforms, hailed the decision and went as far to refer to the new role as a receiver.
But multiple former Department of Correction top officials and government insiders cautioned that Swain’s ruling leaves open one major question: who has ultimate authority?
Mayor Eric Adams? DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie? The yet-to-be named remediation manager? Or the court-appointed monitor, Steve Martin? Judge Swain?
Michael Jacobson, who led the DOC during the Giuliani administration, said the ruling is “unbelievingly confusing and unclear.”
“Whoever this remediation manager is going to be is going to have to have some come to Jesus meeting with the court to make some of these things clear,” he added.
Martin Horn, who served as Correction Commissioner during the Bloomberg administration, agreed.
“I think the judge tried to split the baby,” he told THE CITY, noting that Swain specifically called the soon-to-be appointed person a “remediation manager” as opposed to an actual “receiver.”
Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at Legal Aid, declined to comment for this story.
“Per the Court’s order, we’ll be filing our feedback or objections to the Court’s order on June 27, so we’d like to reserve comment for now,” she said.
‘Just Not the Real World’
Notably, the remediation manager would have the power of “negotiation of contracts, or renegotiation of existing contracts if necessary,” Swain ruled. Third-party receivers in other jurisdictions have had the ability to totally revamp existing labor contracts.
“The [Remediation Manager] clearly does not have that power,” Jacobson said, noting that the person in that role could ultimately petition the judge to make certain changes to the existing labor contracts.
The former DOC Commissioners said the judge appeared to lack a basic understanding of how city collective bargaining works.
The city’s Office of Labor Relations handles all contract talks and frequently leaves out DOC commissioners, and other agency heads, from those talks.
“I wish I was central to collective bargaining,” Jacobson said, referring to his time leading the DOC. “You don’t even have a seat at the table.”
“It’s just one example of how is it going to work in the real world,” he said. “The mayor still has a role. The commissioner still has a role, and some independent role exists now for the remediation manager.”
Last week, Swain repeatedly noted that the remediation manager would only be charged with forcing the DOC to comply with 18 separate contempt orders tied to security, staffing and use of force by officers against detainees.
“This grant of power to the Remediation Manager is thus narrowly drawn…and is the least intrusive means necessary to correct the violation of the Contempt Provisions,” she wrote.
But the contempt orders touch on everything from how officers are trained to where they can be assigned to how they can be disciplined.
Jacobson noted all those issues are interconnected and sometimes involve other agencies like Correctional Health Services, which oversees health care for people in jail, and the city’s Office of Management and Budget, which has total control over the DOC’s pursestrings.
“It’s just not the real world,” Jacobson said, referring to the judge’s decision. “Everything is of a piece.”
It’s not just former DOC commissioners who believe the judge’s decision will need to be clarified.
“I imagine that you will need someone to call balls and strikes when there are disagreements that arise among some of these leaders, and surely there will be disagreements,” said Hernandez D. Stroud, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, who has studied how similar court takeovers have worked in other parts of the country.
In her 77-page decision, Swain made it clear she wants all the sides to work together.
She used some form of the word “collaborate” 26 times in her decision.
“The word the judge uses more than any other word in that order is ‘collaboration’ and she also relies on the fact that the current Commissioner seems to have everybody’s confidence,” said Horn, who also served as the city’s Probation Department commissioner during the Bloomberg administration.
“But there’s no guarantee that she [Maginley-Liddie] will remain, certainly, if the mayoralty changes,” he added.
In fact, there have been five DOC commissioners since Swain has handled the case over the last decade.
“Unless the court is planning to order her being kept there, there’s going to be six different commissioners between now and whenever substantial compliance is made,” Jacobson predicted.
Swain has previously tried to get the two sides — defendants and plaintiffs in the notorious “Nunez case” — to collaboratively develop a plan for an “outside person” to operate the system.
The effort failed.
Four months later, the two sides each submitted their drastically different ideas for what the role should be. The city argued the current commissioner should remain in place and also be given additional powers as a receiver. The Legal Aid Society slammed that idea and contended only an outside person would succeed.
Swain last week agreed with the plaintiffs.
Her decision detailed some basic qualifications the potential Remediation Manager must have such as “substantial management and correctional expertise developed outside of the DOC.”
Swain directed the city and Legal Aid Society to each select four potential candidates for the role by Aug. 29. They can rank their picks but Swain will have ultimate say on who is chosen.
Meanwhile, the city’s Department of Investigations on Monday issued a scathing report into “excessive workers’ compensation claims” by DOC staff. The city doled out more than $340 million for claims by DOC employees in 2024. It paid just under $225 million by staff of all other mayoral agencies combined during that same period, according to DOI.
Also Monday, one current and two former DOC correction officers were arrested and charged with healthcare fraud and other offenses tied to allegedly bogus workers’ compensation claims to the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board.
As part of its DOI 15-page report, the oversight agency recommended that DOC appoint a “Director of Workplace Safety” to keep track of possible abuses and to develop “clear safety protocols.”
City Correction Officers have what’s described as “unlimited sick time” and can take off for weeks or months if necessary. The setup is to allow officers injured on the job time to recuperate. DOC is supposed to keep close track of the officers out but the department’s investigators have gotten overwhelmed in recent years with up to 1,000 calling out sick in 2022.
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