Judge Finds New York in Contempt, Clearing the Way for Rikers Takeover

The finding was a landmark in a court case that has stretched out over more than a decade. Plans for a receivership of New York City’s jails will be heard on Jan. 14.

A federal judge overseeing New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex on Wednesday found the city in contempt for failing to stem violence and excessive force at the facility, and said she was leaning toward taking control of the city’s jails.

The judge, Laura Taylor Swain, said in a 65-page opinion that the city and its Department of Correction had violated the constitutional rights of prisoners and staff members alike by exposing them to danger, and had intentionally ignored her orders.

The judge wrote that she was “inclined” to impose an outside authority, known as a receiver, which she said would be a “remedy that will make the management of the use of force and safety aspects of the Rikers Island jails ultimately answerable directly to the court.” She ordered the city and lawyers representing prisoners to devise a plan for a receivership by Jan. 14.

“This is a historic decision,” said the Legal Aid Society and one of the private firms that filed the class-action lawsuit. “The culture of brutality on Rikers Island has resisted judicial and political reform efforts for years.”

The city has spent huge sums on its Correction Department, which now holds more than 6,000 detainees, many of whom are awaiting trials. New York has spent more than $400,000 a year per inmate — more than six times the average in other large U.S. cities — but Rikers has broken down in fundamental ways, with some detainees wandering around unsupervised outside of their cells and others going without food or basic medical care.

The situation has continued to devolve no matter who the mayor or the Correction Department commissioner is, with reform efforts turned aside by politics and a powerful correction officers’ union. A judge could grant a receiver the power to dissolve or alter labor contracts like the one that provides officers with protections like unlimited sick leave, which critics have said hinders improvement in the jails. In recent years, as many as one in three jailers have failed to show up for work each day.

Judge Swain’s ruling on Wednesday came nearly a decade after the city’s jails, which include the Rikers Island complex, fell under federal oversight in a settlement of a class-action lawsuit. Since then, a court-appointed monitor has issued regular reports on the violence that has continued to plague the facilities. In the past two years, at least 33 people have died in the jails or shortly after being released.

Amaris Cockfield, a spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Adams, said on Wednesday that the Correction Department had “made significant progress toward addressing the decades-long neglect and issues on Rikers Island” under the helm of Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, who was appointed commissioner of the agency last year.

“We are proud of our work, but recognize there is more to be done,” Ms. Cockfield said.

The City Council has voted to close Rikers Island by August 2027 and replace it with four smaller borough jails that are meant to be more humane and more accessible to detainees’ families and lawyers. But Rikers is unlikely to be closed by the deadline and conditions have continued to deteriorate.

Last year, the federal monitor, Steve J. Martin, filed a report saying that violence was unabated and that officials were hiding information about it. Mr. Martin’s team recommended that the judge consider holding the Correction Department in contempt in the case, which was brought by prisoners, the Legal Aid Society and the law firms Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel and Ropes & Gray.

On Wednesday, Judge Swain found the city in contempt of 18 provisions of the settlement. She wrote that the nine years since the deal was reached had shown that depending on jail officials who answered to politicians would merely mean more confrontation and delay.

“The current management structure and staffing are insufficient to turn the tide within a reasonable period,” Judge Swain wrote, noting “that enormous resources — that the city devotes to a system that is at the same time overstaffed and underserved — are not being deployed effectively.”

Last November, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, formally joined calls for the appointment of an outside authority to take control of Rikers Island. Nicholas Biase, his spokesman, declined to comment on Judge Swain’s ruling.

In her opinion Wednesday, Judge Swain said that the federal monitor had filed more than 50 reports since being appointed nearly a decade ago, and that not only had little improved, but conditions had actually worsened.

Since a consent decree was reached in 2015 under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city has nearly lost control of its jails several times. In 2022, Judge Swain gave the city more time to fix the rampant violence at the facilities. One issue that has repeatedly been pointed to as a barrier to change is the powerful guard union, the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, and its contracts.

Elizabeth Glazer, the founder of Vital City, a nonprofit focused on public safety policy, said a receiver would have the power to dissolve the contracts of unions, but that a judge could limit and define the official’s powers.

“That’s why it’s so controversial, because the receiver’s powers are so broad,” said Ms. Glazer, who headed the Office of Criminal Justice under Mayor de Blasio.

Sarena Townsend, a former chief of investigations at the Correction Department, said the judge had taken a conservative approach, giving the department ample time to change course.

“What the contempt motion shows is that it doesn’t matter who the commissioner of the Department of Correction is,” she said. “The only way to change the culture on Rikers is to install someone who has the power to overrule a corrupt union and anyone who may not have the will to do the right thing.”

The jails employ about 5,000 people who are represented by the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, and its president said conditions could be improved by hiring more.

The president, Benny Boscio, said Judge Swain’s ruling was “largely based on the false and erroneous narrative promulgated by the federal monitor,” and that she had erred by saying the jails had too many employees.

“Outsourcing control of Rikers Island to a federal receiver will not be a silver bullet and will not solve any of these problems,” Mr. Boscio said. “Giving correction officers the manpower and resources to enforce law and order in our jails will.”

Judge Swain on Wednesday also took aim at the top of the Correction Department, writing that the “glacial pace of reform” could be explained by “an unfortunate cycle demonstrated by D.O.C. leadership.”

The leadership “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,” Judge Swain said, adding that the pattern was “concretely demonstrated by D.O.C.’s continued launching and subsequent abandonment of numerous plans, pilots and facilities over the last nine years.”

Hernandez D. Stroud, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, said that “the opinion reflects a judge that is sort of at the end of the road to reform Rikers through the courts — and ultimately finds that receivership might be the only way forward.” Mr. Stroud said there had been only about a dozen receiverships for prisons and jails in the country’s history.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote that after years during which the city failed to improve jail conditions, Wednesday’s order could “protect those who have been failed.”

“We laud this ruling,” they wrote.

Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting.

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