Its physical plant is a dump. Its size is unmanageable. Its leadership, from the mayor to the Department of Corrections to its senior staff, has never demonstrated the will to do more than make it through another day. The district attorney with jurisdiction over it has largely turned a blind eye toward the crimes committed against prisoners. The union representing corrections officers has long been corrupt and shielded its members from consequences for their actions and inactions.
And now, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York is moving under a consent decree to have Judge Laura Taylor Swain, overseeing the consent decree, appoint a federal receiver to take control of Rikers Island, the primary complex of New York City jails.
The city’s jails, most of which are on Rikers Island in the East River, have been plagued by problems for decades, but the most recent tumult arrived with the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. Covid-19 hit the correction officers who work inside the jails hard and led to mass absenteeism: At the height of the crisis that followed, up to 2,000 officers were failing to show up for work each day.
The jails descended into chaos, with violence and self-harm among detainees skyrocketing in 2021. The following year, Mayor Adams assumed office and appointed a new jails commissioner, Louis A. Molina, who vowed to get things under control. Still, 19 people died while being held in city jails in 2022, or directly after they were released, the most in nearly a decade. Six more have died this year.
Rikers Island is, in fact, an island in The Bronx that was dedicated to the cause of holding the city’s pretrial detainees and prisoners serving sentences of less than one year. When it was established in 1932, it made enormous sense as it provided a natural boundary to keep prisoners from escaping and kept them apart from the rest of the residents of New York City. Current concerns for the welfare of prisoners and their families weren’t considerations back then. Nobody wanted a jail in their neighborhood and prisoners had to be somewhere. So Rikers, affectionately known as The Rock, it was.
But current complaints ignore the persistent failings of the jail. It was always a dangerous dump, whether it was inmates beating and killing each others, guards beating and killing inmates, or guards forcing inmates to play gladiator for their amusement until guards figured out they can not show up for work, still get paid, and only come in occasionally when they felt the urge to inflict some pain on some kids who couldn’t fight back.
In 2014, the U.S. attorney’s office, then led by Preet Bharara, announced that, after a two-and-a-half-year investigation, it had found systematic civil rights violations of male teenagers by guards at Rikers. The prosecutor’s office eventually joined the pending class-action lawsuit.
In June 2015, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio reached a wide-ranging settlement in the lawsuit, committing to far-reaching reforms, including the appointment of a monitor, and new policies to restrict the use of force by guards against inmates.
Surely “good guys” like Preet, BdB and the newly appointed federal monitor under the settlement would clean up Rikers. Except they accomplished nothing of substance giving rise to the new motion for the appointment of a receiver.
The prosecutor’s statement on Monday comes amid continuing mayhem at the jails — where three people have died this month alone — as well as reports from a federal monitor who oversees them that accused city officials of hiding important information about troubling episodes of violence and neglect.
With Mr. Williams’s comments, every entity involved in deciding the future of the jails — lawyers for detainees, the federal monitor, Steve J. Martin, and now, the U.S. attorney’s office — save for the city itself has either called for an outside authority to take over, or simply expressed lack of faith in the ability of the administration to turn things around..
Yes, it’s our good friend, the syllogism** again. This problem, through its many permutations, that’s plagued Rikers for generations and defied every attempt to fix has now gotten past the beloved “federal monitor” during the administrations of a very progressive mayor and still it’s every bit the dump it’s always been.
Should a federal receiver be appointed, what will he or she do? Rikers has 9000 corrections officers, screws of the worst sort. Should they all be fired en masse, their public sector union thrown in the East River, and the prisoners left to fend for themselves until 9000 better guards get hired? Can a leader of integrity change the culture of brutality and hatred so that guards suddenly decide that it’s wrong to beat inmates? If abuse will no longer be tolerated, will Bronx DA Darcel Clark start prosecuting guards for their crimes against inmates?
It’s a lot easier to complain about the unfixable than to take responsibility for fixing it. Should a federal receiver be appointed, the responsibility will shift from the failed and incompetent city Department of Corrections to whomever gets the gig. US Attorney Damian Williams is moving to take over Rikers Island because everything else has failed. Can a receiver fix it? Can anyone fix it?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
**The syllogism:
Something must be done.
This is something.
This must be done.
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What they SHOULD do and what they WILL do will be nothing alike.
They should build a new facility. But were in driving distance of the courthouse would you find enough land? Even if you built several smaller jails costs for land would be astronomical. The staff should be improved/replaced and that could really be the simplest to do in theory. But the unions would fight that until administrations change and the urge for reform goes away. And recruiting people into law enforcement today is a struggle for good locations to work, much less a place shrouded in controversy.
While no local political boss wants to give any part of their fiefdom, a federal takeover it the best thing. The appointed special master can impose changes. The city and politicians can wail publicly while privately heaving a sigh of relief. There will be something in it for the union somewhere, probably increased membership. So, in a weird way everyone wins, except the inmates. The current population will be back on the street before any changes become tangible.
“Nuke it from orbit.”
Short answer, “no.” There is no federal magic. I remember when, in decades past, the federal courts thought they knew how to run urban school systems.
Reminds me of your “changing the head on the corpse” analogy. At this point, there’s no fixing Rikers, and why the feds want to take ownership of this fiasco is bizarre. At the same time, they can’t get rid of Rikers without having other jails to house the prisoners. And at the same time again, the screws are still screws, with the same corrupt screw union, regardless of what physical jail they go to for their shift.
And the prisoners probably don’t make any of this easier. What a disaster.
It’s Tuesday, so why not.
A man walks out to the street and catches a taxi just going by. He gets into the taxi, and the cabbie says, “Perfect timing. You’re just like Frank.”
Passenger: “Who?”
Cabbie: “Frank Johnson. He’s a guy who did everything right all the time.
Passenger: “There are always a few clouds over everybody.”
Cabbie: “Not Frank Johnson. He was a terrific athlete. He could have won the Grand-Slam at tennis. He could golf with the pros. He sang like an opera baritone and danced like a Broadway star and you should have heard him play the piano. He was an amazing guy.”
Passenger: “Sounds like he was really something special.”
Cabbie: “There’s more. He had a memory like a computer. He remembered everybody’s birthday. He knew all about wine, which foods to order and which fork to eat them with. He could fix anything. Not like me. I change a fuse, and the whole street blacks out. But Frank Johnson could do everything right every single time.”
Passenger: “Wow, what a guy!”
Cabbie: “He always knew the quickest way to go in traffic and avoid traffic jams. Not like me, I always seem to get stuck in them. But Frank, he never made a mistake, and he really knew how to treat a woman and make her feel good.
He would never answer her back even if she was in the wrong; and his clothing was always immaculate, shoes highly polished too.
He was the perfect man! He never made a mistake. No one could ever measure up to Frank Johnson.”
Passenger: “How did you meet him?”
Cabbie: “I never actually met Frank. He died and I married his wife.”
I’ve never made a mistake. I thought I did once, but I was wrong.
Rikers, like NYC, is hopeless. Decades of greed, corruption and neglect have started a doom loop that cannot be stopped. The only solution is to stay away.