Federal Judge Orders NYC to Hand Over Jail System to Outside Official

The order says that that official is responsible for the ’remediation of the ongoing violations of the constitutional rights ... in the New York City jails.’

Rikers Island, New York's biggest lockup, on June 20, 2014. Seth Wenig/AP Photo

A federal judge on Tuesday issued an order allowing an outside official to take control of the New York City jail system, including the troubled Rikers Island facility, and tasked that official with rectifying “ongoing violations” at those facilities and reporting updates to the court.

In a 77-page decision issued on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain wrote that the official will be tasked with supporting the “remediation of the ongoing violations of the constitutional rights of people in custody in the New York City jails.”

She did not name the official but said the person would have to directly report to the court and that the official cannot be a city government employee.

“The Nunez Remediation Manager will be granted broad powers, similar to those described in the Receivership Proposal,” Swain wrote, referring to the title of the official. The court, she wrote, will also expect to “see continual progress toward these goals so that control of use of force and related policies and practices can be returned to the City and the [Department of Corrections] as quickly as possible.”

While the official would have to work with the Department of Corrections and the city to make sure that the jails are changed, the court notes that the manager “may find it necessary to alter relevant aspects of the current leadership structure of the Department of Corrections to accomplish the necessary Contempt Provision compliance,” the judge said.

Rikers Island, a prison island located in the East River within the Bronx borough of the city, is the primary jail managed by the city, although it is in the process of closing the prison down and creating borough-based facilities to hold arrested individuals.

Swain also wrote that the city’s management over the past several years has left “no doubt that continued insistence on compliance with the court’s orders by persons answerable principally to political authorities would lead only to confrontation and delay” and that the “current management structure and staffing are insufficient to turn the tide within a reasonable period.”

The city has “consistently fallen short of the requisite compliance with court orders for years, at times under circumstances that suggest bad faith,” Swain wrote, adding that “enormous resources—that the City devotes to a system that is at the same time overstaffed and underserved—are not being deployed effectively.”

On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in response to Swain’s decision, told AMNY that the problems at the jail system “are decades in the making” and that “they didn’t just start Jan. 1, 2022,” or when he became mayor of New York City.

“The federal judge made a determination that they want to do something else, and they don’t like what we’re doing. It’s a federal judge. We’re going to follow the rules,” he said, adding that Swain should also consider state laws that say “we can’t handcuff dangerous inmates when we’re transporting them.”

Swain also ordered the parties in the case to submit up to four recommendations regarding who to appoint as the outside manager of the jail system by Aug. 29.

The class-action lawsuit that led to Swain’s order is known as Nunez v. City of New York, and it was settled in 2015.