Feds sound alarm about dangerous conditions at NYC jails — as prospect of takeover looms
The feds continued to sound the alarm about dangerous and sometimes deadly conditions inside New York City lockups — as a potential federal takeover of the troubled jail system inched closer Thursday.
During a court hearing in Manhattan, the federal monitor team overseeing Rikers Island called out the Department of Correction for failing to remedy the high rate of violence and rampant drug use at the jail complex.
“For far too long, report after report, the recommendations [of the monitor] have fallen to the ground,” Deputy Monitor Anna Friedberg said in Manhattan federal court, describing the “stalled plans for reform”
Friedberg raised concerns about jail guards skipping out on their rounds and other duties, allowing inmates to roam around inside the lockup.
“What has lacked has been the implementation of those plans and basic supervision of this workforce,” she charged. “At its core, this is an agency in which the staff and supervisors are permitted to abdicate their basic correctional responsibilities with impunity.”
Judge Laura Taylor Swain agreed with the monitor’s team, and allowed the feds to continue with the legal process for getting a court-appointed receiver to manage the lockups.
“The court is deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of every person held at Rikers Island and all of those who work there,” Swain said during a hearing.
“The defendants [New York City] have not demonstrated by action, sufficient willingness or ability to engage productively with the monitoring team, let alone sustain the necessary significant and effective progress towards the reforms that are necessary to ensure safety for everyone at Rikers,” she added.
The ruling Thursday afternoon was the latest development in the battle for control of the city’s jail system, which has been under the oversight of a federal monitor for nearly a decade due to allegations of abuse and violence behind bars.
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has strongly pushed back as calls for a federal takeover of the jails intensified in recent months.
DOC Commissioner Louis Molina argued Thursday that the department was on the right track and making strides in addressing the staffing shortage and conditions inside the jails — but said that guards have been dealing with an increasingly violent population.
“Let me be clear, we have been like I stated rebuilding this department and making unprecedented progress is the apex of this crisis,” Molina said, while conceding, “Our work is far from complete.”
Swain, though, sided with the monitor’s assertions that the progress has not been quick enough.
“The defendants have not yet shown me that they are willing and able to make the rapid, radical changes in the administration of the jails that are necessary,” the judge said.
The monitor last month described a “disturbing level of regression” at the lockups under the Adams administration, and asked the judge to hold the city in contempt to force it to comply with suggested reforms.
Swain also ruled Thursday that the feds could continue to seek a contempt order against the city.
The feds and the city will each prepare arguments about the takeover and contempt order, with the next hearing in the case set for late November.
