A federal judge in New York has taken the extraordinary step of seizing control of the city’s troubled Rikers Island jail complex, one of the nation’s largest and most famous jails, which houses around 7,000 inmates.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain, in a 77-page ruling, ordered the notorious jail – and the city’s entire jail system — be run by an independent officer reporting solely to the court, having found that conditions at the jail remained unconstitutionally dangerous, with persistent failures by NYC Department of Correction (DOC) leadership to implement court-mandated reforms.
“The unsafe and dangerous conditions in the jails… have become normalized despite the fact that they are clearly abnormal and unacceptable,” Swain wrote.
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The order stems from a 2011 case, Nunez v. City of New York, when a group of incarcerated individuals filed a federal lawsuit alleging a pattern of excessive and unnecessary force by staff in New York City jails. In 2015, the city agreed to a settlement known as the Nunez Consent Judgment, which laid out hundreds of required reforms to reduce violence and improve oversight.
“Nine years have passed since the parties first agreed that the perilous conditions in the Rikers Island jails were unconstitutional; that the level of unconstitutional danger has not improved… is both alarming and unacceptable,” Swain also wrote in the order.
In November, she held the DOC and city in civil contempt for violating 18 provisions of court orders meant to reduce violence, abuse, and dysfunction in the jail system.
Swain ordered the jail system be overseen by an independent official — a Nunez Remediation Manager — reporting solely to the court, with powers similar to a receiver but focused specifically on the city’s contempt violations.
The official will report directly to the court and will have full authority to change DOC policies related to the use of force, staffing, discipline, and security.
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams had vigorously opposed a federal takeover but said on Tuesday that he would comply with the federal judge’s decision.
“If 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 judgement,” Adams said at a press briefing Tuesday on a different issue. “We’re going to follow the rules.”
In 2017, former Mayor Bill de Blasio initiated a plan to close the prison within 10 years aimed at reducing the city’s jail population and replacing Rikers with four modern, borough-based jails located in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. De Blasio said the goal was to address systemic injustice, improve jail conditions and support decarceration and bail reform.
But the plan appears unlikely to come to fruition anytime soon due to significant delays, with the first of the replacement jails not scheduled to finish before 2029, according to the New York Post.
The de Blasio plan was approved by the City Council and prohibited capital investments in the facility, which Adams said tied his hands in relation to improving conditions, although he said that the problems there are decades old and that conditions improved under his leadership with fewer stabbings, assaults and absenteeism.
“I’m hoping [the judge] looked at the funding plan we had… we should be able to spend capital dollars to improve the facility.”
Swain acknowledged that these limitations were part of the context but did not accept them as valid excuses. She said the Nunez Remediation Manager could raise issues of capital spending with her.
The court’s decision was praised by Mary Lynne Werlwas of The Legal Aid Society, and Debra Greenberger, partner at the law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel.
“For years, the New York City Department of Correction has failed to follow federal court orders to enact meaningful reforms, allowing violence, disorder, and systemic dysfunction to persist in the jails,” they said.
“This appointment marks a critical turning point—an overdue acknowledgment that City leadership has proven unable to protect the safety and constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals.”
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