Citing progress at Rikers, judge says New York is no longer in contempt
A federal judge in New York has lifted a contempt of court order against the city’s Corrections Department, saying the agency has made progress in identifying cases of corrections officers using excessive force at the Rikers Island prison complex.
In December, a judge, Laura T. Swain, ruled that the agency had failed to cooperate with a federal regulator that has overseen the prison system since 2015. The department has since developed a clear and detailed plan for how it will communicate with the regulator. , Judge Swain said in documents filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.
The ruling is a crucial step in the city’s efforts to avert the years-long threat to take away control of Rikers. In November, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams asked the judge to transfer control of Rikers to an outside authority, arguing that it was the only way to end the violence and chaos in the prison complex. Mr. Williams said the Corrections Department was “unable or unwilling” to make changes to reduce violence and “remediate the continued violation of the constitutional rights of people in custody.”
The judge’s decision follows the appointment of a new Commissioner of the Department of Correction, Lynelle Maginley-Liddie. She was sworn on December 8, about two weeks before Judge Swain issued the contempt order, and she agreed to cooperate more fully with the monitor, Steve J. Martin.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Judge Swain acknowledged that the agency has since taken “significant steps in returning to a more collaborative and transparent relationship” with Mr. Martin.
But she added, “The danger to individuals in custody and employees at Rikers Island is still unacceptable.” The court, she said, expects “swift changes to ensure the safety of those who live and work there.”
Last year, Mr. Martin described five “serious and disturbing” incidents that he said Rikers staff and leadership had failed to report, including the deaths of two people in custody. In December, an investigation by the Board of Correction, the city oversight panel that examines prison practices, found that staff members had locked eight people in their cells when smoke from a fire spread through a housing unit.
So far this year, two people have died at Rikers, a Corrections Department spokesperson said. Nine people died in custody in 2023, compared to seventeen in 2022.
Since her appointment, Ms Maginley-Liddie has faced increasing pressure to improve prison conditions. Her predecessor, Louis A. Molina, and Mayor Eric Adams were criticized by watchdogs and prisoners’ rights advocates for efforts to roll back the transparency efforts of previous administrations.
During Mr. Molina’s tenure, the agency temporarily limited the public release of potentially damaging information revoked the corrections board’s unrestricted access to video footage from Rikers Island and ended a previous practice of quickly notifying the press when deaths occur in custody. Mayor Adams has since appointed Mr. Molina as Deputy Mayor for Public Safety.
Ms. Maginley-Liddie, an attorney and eight-year veteran of the Corrections Department, said in a statement Wednesday that she “committed to strengthening the department’s relationship with the monitoring team, and I am grateful to Judge Swain for seeing the progress that we have booked. made.”
In a letter to the court this week, Mr Martin said information between his team and the agency “flows more freely and consultations are taking place more frequently than in the previous two years.”
He added that he has “not identified any situation where the department should have consulted the monitoring team but did not” since Ms Maginley-Liddie took over.