Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a new leader on Saturday to run New York City’s Department of Correction, selecting Stanley Richards to helm the agency just days after a federal judge placed a former C.I.A. officer in control of the city’s troubled jail complex on Rikers Island.
Mr. Richards, who most recently served as the chief executive of a prisoner advocacy nonprofit, will be the first formerly incarcerated person to lead the Correction Department. He will take the reins at a tense moment, after years of violence and mismanagement at Rikers Island led a federal judge to appoint Nicholas Deml, the former C.I.A. officer, to oversee the complex.
As the correction commissioner, Mr. Richards will face a slate of mounting issues in the city’s jail system — including a growing number of in-custody deaths and an impending deadline to close Rikers Island — along with a new power structure that limits the commissioner’s and the mayor’s authority over the jails.
“I will turn to Stanley as we work to build a city where justice is at the heart of our corrections system, where every Department of Correction employee and incarcerated New Yorker is safe,” Mr. Mamdani said during a news conference at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
At the conference, the mayor also named Dr. Alister Martin to lead the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and made three other commissioner appointments — to the Department of Youth and Community Development, the Department of Veterans’ Services and the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.
Mr. Richards will replace Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, whom Mayor Eric Adams appointed in 2023. The new commissioner was incarcerated decades ago at Rikers and has spent most of his career at the Fortune Society, a nonprofit that supports former inmates as they re-enter society. According to the group, Mr. Richards began working there in 1991 as a counselor and most recently served as its president and chief executive.
Mr. Richards’s appointment is not the first time he has held a high post overseeing the city’s jail system.
He was the vice-chair of New York City’s Board of Correction, the agency responsible for protecting the rights of incarcerated people, and in 2021, he served briefly as the first deputy commissioner of the Correction Department.
Rikers Island has been under federal oversight since 2015, when the city agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit. The agreement focused on curbing the use of force at the jail and on minimizing violence, which has run rampant inside its walls for years. Laura Taylor Swain, a federal judge, appointed a monitor that year to oversee progress at the complex.
Last May, however, Judge Swain ordered that the jail be taken out of the city’s control and placed under the direction of a remediation manager who would report directly to her. This week, she named Mr. Deml, who led the Vermont Corrections Department, to that role, which she has said would have “broad powers.”
Mr. Deml will work with Mr. Richards on developing a plan for improvements at the jail, but Mr. Deml will also be given powers traditionally held by the commissioner, Judge Swain has said, complicating Mr. Richards’s authority. Mr. Deml will be allowed to hire and fire personnel, change policies and, if he finds that established contracts are impeding his efforts, he can petition the court to override them.
In addition to the altered power structure, Mr. Richards will face a fast-approaching deadline to close Rikers Island and replace it with four smaller borough-based jails, an initiative he oversaw in his previous role at the Correction Department. Under a law passed by the City Council in 2019, Rikers must be shuttered by August 2027, though the city is unlikely to meet that deadline.
The estimated costs for the four jails has risen to $15.5 billion, a ballooning price tag that arrives as New York faces a steep budget deficit, according to the city comptroller.
In his remarks on Saturday, Mr. Richards described a vision of reform for the department, focused on making the city’s lockups safer and on building borough-based jails that “prioritize dignity, opportunity and humanity.” He also pledged to increase access to social services for inmates re-entering society.
“Under Mayor Mamdani’s leadership we will chart a path of hope, healing and transformation,” Mr. Richards said. “His administration made clear that the future of Rikers is not endless confinement, scapegoating or demonizing.”
The announcement on Saturday elicited support from public defense organizations, as well as a message of tentative openness from a union representing correction officers. “We have been ready, willing and able to meet and work with anyone, as long as they respect the rights of our correction officers,” Benny Boscio, the president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said in a statement.
Like Mr. Richards, Dr. Martin will take control of the health department at a moment of relative upheaval.
Thousands of city nurses went on strike on Jan. 12, walking out of some of New York’s top hospitals amid a bitter labor dispute. The effort is the largest nurses’ strike in the city in decades and nearly 15,000 workers have remained on strike since, enduring frigid conditions on the picket line as they push for increased staffing, more security and better pay.
In his role as health commissioner, Dr. Martin will have no influence over the strike or the hospitals, which are regulated by the state.
But Dr. Martin, an emergency room physician and White House fellow under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., could face headwinds of his own.
Dr. Martin will have to convince parents to continue vaccinating their children at high rates, even as the federal government overhauls the childhood vaccine schedule and sows doubts about the necessity of many vaccines. He will also be tasked with ensuring that the city is prepared for the next pandemic, even as many health department employees with experience in fighting outbreaks have departed in recent years.
On Saturday, Dr. Martin said he would focus not only on keeping New Yorkers healthy but also on ensuring that they remained insured and housed.
“We’re going to prove that public health is not just about disease, it’s about dignity,” he said.
Mr. Mamdani also appointed Sandra Escamilla-Davies as commissioner of the Department of Youth and Community Development; Yesenia Mata as commissioner of the Department of Veterans’ Services; and Vilda Vera Mayuga as commissioner of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.
After the news conference concluded, Mr. Richards’s wife, Satara Richards, said it was a powerful moment.
“It’s history in the making,” Ms. Richards said, adding: “No matter what change is possible, no matter where it comes from or where it’s going. And I support my husband 100 percent because he’s a person of change.”
Joseph Goldstein and Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
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