Federal prosecutor asks judge to strip New York of control of Rikers

The federal government formally joined an effort Friday to wrest Mayor Eric Adams’ control of Rikers Island by asking a judge to transfer oversight of the troubled prison complex to an outside authority.

Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Damian Williams, joined attorneys representing people held in New York City jails and wrote in a lawsuit that appointing an outside authority known as a receiver was the only solution to the continued violence and chaos at Rikers. .

Mr. Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, had previously called for a takeover in July. The day after that statement, the judge who will decide a takeover, Laura Taylor Swain of the Federal District Court, wrote that the Adams administration had failed to “address the dangerous conditions that continue to plague prisons.” In August, she established a schedule for federal prosecutors and attorneys for inmates to argue for guardianship; Friday’s filings were the first step in that lengthy process.

The Justice Department has sought these types of solutions in “only a handful of corrections cases and under exceptional circumstances,” Mr. Williams wrote Friday, adding that under two mayors and four corrections commissioners, the city was “unable or unwilling” to implement reforms that would reduce violence and “remediate the ongoing violation of the constitutional rights of people in custody.”

The parties also asked Judge Swain to hold the city in contempt for violating a 2015 agreement that required the city to make major reforms.

A spokesman for the city’s legal department, Nick Paolucci, said Saturday that the administration has made progress in addressing long-standing problems at Rikers and that receivership is not the answer to fixing the prison system.

Mr. Williams’s documents, along with those from the Legal Aid Society and a private law firm representing people incarcerated at Rikers, come at a time when the city is under increasing pressure to demonstrate improvements in jail conditions, and weeks after the government announced that embattled prison commissioner Louis A. Molina would leave his post in mid-November and become assistant deputy mayor for public safety. Mr Adams has not appointed a successor.

That receivership is on the table “reflects the enormity of the problems that still exist in the city’s jails,” said Hernandez D. Stroud, counsel at the Justice Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. The city will have a chance to respond to the filings, and then the plaintiffs will have another chance to respond, he said, adding that it could be well into next year before Judge Swain makes a decision on the issue of guardianship.

So far, the city has failed to understand the “urgency and severity” of the crisis it has created, said Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society.

“A trustee is needed now because there is nothing the court can do to force the city to operate the jails within constitutional limits,” she said.

Watchdogs and prisoners’ rights advocates have also criticized Adams’ administration for what they say are attempts to roll back transparency efforts by previous administrations. Under Mr. Molina’s tenure, the Department of Corrections has restricted the public release of potentially damaging information. revoking a prison monitoring panel’s unrestricted access to video footage from Rikers Island (it later restored access) and ended a previous policy of notifying the public when deaths occur in custody.

Last month, nine people have died in New York City jails this year. Nineteen died last year.

A federal monitor appointed to oversee the prisons as part of the 2015 agreement has pointed to incidents that he said showed continued dysfunction and dangers at the island complex in recent months, many of which he said corrections officials told him had not told about it and in some cases had hidden it. The monitor, Steve J. Martin, wrote in a report earlier this month that instead of making incremental progress, the department showed “persistent and chronic institutional resistance and aversion to court-ordered reforms.”

In his recent reports, Mr Martin has highlighted that prison conditions and the risk of harm, for both inmates and correctional officers, have not improved.

In May, Mr Martin described five “serious and disturbing” incidents over a two-week period that he said prison staff and leadership had failed to report, including the deaths of two people in custody. One inmate, Carlton James, was seriously injured after being tackled by corrections officers on May 11.

Mr. James was tackled twice in one day, once while he was “handcuffed and in leg irons at the back,” according to the monitor, and was taken to hospital, where he underwent multiple operations. Mr Martin said his team did not become aware of the seriousness of his condition until May 24. after a statement from the Correctional Service was included in an article in De Stad.

In an affidavit filed with the charges on Friday, Mr James said he was paralyzed from the neck down and remained in hospital.