New York City could lose control over its jails after a federal judge on Wednesday said that it had failed to improve conditions at the notoriously dangerous Rikers Island complex.
The judge, Laura Taylor Swain, found the city in contempt of a 2015 agreement to stem abuse and violence in the jails, and said that she was “inclined” to wrest control from the city and install a receiver, an independent figure with the authority to reform the system.
Rikers Island has long been the subject of scrutiny over safety issues. In the last two years, dozens of people have died while in the city’s custody or shortly after leaving it.
Here’s what a receivership could mean for jails in New York.
What is a receiver?
A receiver is an independent authority appointed by a court to temporarily run a failing institution. In New York, the receiver would have control over all or some parts of the city’s jails. Once conditions improve enough to meet the court’s standards, the receiver would return control to the city.
Receiverships are among the most drastic legal tools at a court’s disposal. Once appointed, receivers typically have power to make sweeping changes. Often, they negotiate contracts, change how money is allocated and make staffing decisions. Exactly what a receiver is empowered to do is determined by a judge.
Receivers in public institutions are relatively rare. Only a dozen jail and prison systems have come under receivership in United States history, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy institute. Each receivership is unique, and courts have significant latitude in deciding the parameters of the arrangement.
In some cases, receivers work alongside the department leaders already running a jail or prison system. Receivers can also be appointed to oversee just one troubled part of a larger system, as is the case in California, where a receiver has worked with the state’s corrections secretary since 2006 but controls only the prison system’s health care.
How did we get here?
Nearly a decade ago, New York City settled a class-action lawsuit over long-running abuses in its jails, including Rikers Island. As part of the settlement, the court appointed an independent monitor, Steve J. Martin, who is a lawyer and a national corrections expert, to oversee Rikers and help develop reforms.
But conditions have actually worsened since then, Judge Swain said on Wednesday, citing more than 50 reports that Mr. Martin has filed since his appointment. Last year, Mr. Martin wrote in a court filing that the city’s “commitment to effective collaboration” had broken down.
“The department’s approach to reform has recently become characterized by inaccuracies and a lack of transparency,” he wrote.
Judge Swain wrote on Wednesday that the city’s jails, which house more than 6,000 detainees, are “at the same time over-staffed and underserved.”
A New York Times investigation found that guards are often stationed in inefficient ways that fail to protect inmates. An unlimited sick leave policy has also meant that staffing can fluctuate. New York City has spent more than $400,000 per inmate annually in recent years, well beyond what other large cities spend, yet inmates still sometimes go without food or proper medical care.
The politically powerful union that represents the city’s correction officers has defended the department’s sick leave policy and has opposed the appointment of a receiver. One of the receiver’s most important tasks and biggest challenges could be negotiating with the union.
Who will be the Rikers Island receiver?
It will be up to Judge Swain to determine how best to fill the role. A receiver might be someone with management expertise, a public safety consultant or an experienced corrections administrator. The receiver in California is a law professor. In the 1970s, a judge in Alabama appointed the state’s governor to be the receiver of its prisons.
Though the case is being tried in federal court and a federal judge will pick the receiver, Wednesday’s decision does not mean that Rikers Island will become a federal prison. Federal prisons in New York are also rife with violence. The Bureau of Prisons oversees those institutions and would not necessarily be involved with a Rikers receivership.
How could a receiver help?
The problems at Rikers have persisted through different mayoral administrations and the tenures of several Correction Department commissioners. Proponents of receivership say that someone with a powerful legal mandate who operates separately from local government could be able to make improvements quickly and more decisively than lawmakers or judges can.
The court could decide that the receiver should be able to dissolve or change existing labor contracts, according to Elizabeth Glazer, the founder of Vital City, a nonprofit focused on public safety policy.
California’s receivership has yielded several improvements to health care in the state’s prisons, according to a report by a nonpartisan policy analysis agency. They include a $900 million facility to treat inmates with severe medical issues and a new program to help prisoners with substance use disorders. Health care in more than 20 California prisons has been delegated back to the state after the receiver determined that conditions had improved sufficiently.
What could go wrong?
While an outside authority can help jail systems improve conditions, the solutions devised and put in place during the course of the takeover are not always permanent. Problems can return after the receiver gives control back to the local government.
After a judge ordered a receivership for Alabama’s prisons in the 1970s, conditions improved. The state lowered its incarceration rate and spent more money on its corrections facilities. But the turnaround was short-lived: By 1996, the state’s prison population had nearly doubled. In 2018, a report found that the state’s prisons had the highest murder rate of any system in the country, and in 2020 the federal government sued the state, arguing that the conditions in its men’s prisons violated inmates’ constitutional rights.
What happens next?
Lawyers on both sides of the case will have until Jan. 14 to suggest plans for a potential receivership. Judge Swain ordered them to outline the legal basis for their plans and how they would accomplish the change she has deemed necessary.
The City Council voted in 2019 to shutter Rikers for good and replace it with smaller jails in four of the city’s boroughs that advocates say will make it easier for inmates to appear in court and have visitors. But that plan has been delayed; this year the city acknowledged that it would not be able to close Rikers before the legally mandated 2027 deadline.
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