After nearly a decade of ineffective oversight by a court-appointed monitor, the federal judge overseeing the city’s Department of Correction announced Tuesday she will appoint an independent “remediation manager” who will have broad powers and report directly to the court to enact long stalled reforms on Rikers Island.
Laura Taylor Swain, the chief district judge for Manhattan federal court, ruled that the outside remediation manager should work in conjunction with the city’s DOC commissioner.
“The nearly decade-long record in this case, amassed since the Consent Judgment went into effect, establishes that less extreme remediation measures have failed,” Swain wrote in the 77-page decision.
“Defendants have demonstrated — in virtually every core area the Court and the Monitor have identified as related to the persistence of excessive and unnecessary force — that neither court orders nor the Monitor’s interventions are sufficient to push the DOC toward compliance,” she added.
Critically, the remediation manager would have the power of “negotiation of contracts, or renegotiation of existing contracts if necessary,” she ruled. Third-party receivers in other jurisdictions have had the ability to totally revamp existing labor contracts.
The decision is a major blow to Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, which had urged the judge to appoint Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie as the “compliance director.” The DOC hired consultant Gary Raney, a former sheriff from Idaho, who told the court last month that Maginley-Liddie should remain in place and there’s no need for outside third-party. The Legal Aid Society — and a host of elected officials and jail reformers — have for years argued the only way to improve the scandal-scarred Correction Department is by appointing an outsider to run it.
The legal services group is treating Tuesday’s appointment ruling from the judge as a big win. In effect, advocates see the “remediation manager” as similar to federal receivers who have taken over large portions of jail systems in other cities.
“This decision confirms what we have long argued: transformative change in the city’s jails can only occur under the leadership of an independent authority, unbound by the bureaucratic and political forces that have stifled progress for decades,” said Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society, and Debra Greenberger, Partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel.
Swain said the yet-to-be-named remediation manager will “develop a phased action plan” to specifically tackle a series of reforms that the DOC has failed to implement for years, the judge wrote.
The progress of that plan will be overseen by the federal monitor in place since 2015, Swain added.
The manager “will be granted broad powers, similar to those described in the Receivership Proposal,” the judge said, citing the Legal Aid Society’s push to give the outside person total control over major reform proposals.
The person will also have the power to totally rework the department’s leadership structure, according to the judge.
Swain directed the city and Legal Aid Society to each select four potential candidates for the role by Aug. 29. They can rank their preferred person but Swain will have ultimate say on who is chosen.
The judge said she thought about other, less invasive, options, like fining the city for failing to follow through on promised reforms.
“But there is nothing in the record to suggest that increasing the financial burden on defendants, which would in effect be a burden on taxpayers, would secure change,” she said, noting that the city already shells out large sums of money to settle abuse lawsuits.
The mediator will have “ultimate authority” in clearing the multiple outstanding issues that have led to a contempt finding against the DOC, the decision said.
But the unnamed mediator must still work with Maginley-Liddie, Swain ruled.
“The Court emphasizes its hope and confidence that Commissioner Maginley-Liddie will continue to serve a critical leadership role in bringing the Department into compliance with the Nunez Court Orders,” Swain wrote.
The decision is the culmination of 14 years of litigation started by the notorious “Nunez case” in August 2011.
That case was brought by a group of adolescent detainees, who said that city correction officers beat them in areas without video surveillance. They suffered broken bones and other serious injuries, according to the lawsuit certified as a class action in January 2017.
There have been more than 800 court submissions in the case since it was initially filed.
Meanwhile, the correction officers and other jail officials routinely lied or made up disciplinary charges against the detainees to cover up their illegal behavior, the court case alleged. Some of the worst offenders were appointed, jail records showed.
Advocates for people behind bars and jail experts have spent the last four years urging Swain to appoint a receiver.
Last November, Swain first said she was “inclined to impose a receivership,” citing years of failed reforms.
“The glacial pace of reform can be explained by an unfortunate cycle demonstrated by DOC leadership, which has changed materially a number of times over the life of the Court’s orders, wherein initiatives are created, changed in some material way or abandoned, and then restarted,” she wrote.
The new ruling comes as the de Blasio-era plan to shutter Rikers has come under attack while the number of people locked has steadily gone up since Eric Adams became mayor in January 2022.
The shut down plan requires the population to drop to around 4,400. There are 7,537 people on Rikers as of Monday, according to city records.
Even with the remediation manager, Maginley-Liddie and City Hall officials will still be in charge of the broader plan to build four new jails near criminal courthouses in each borough aside from Staten Island.
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