The official in charge of fixing New York City’s troubled jails submitted a plan to a federal judge on Tuesday to improve conditions at Rikers Island, calling for changes to investigations and discipline, as well as to some infrastructure.
The official, Nicholas Deml, was appointed in January by a federal judge overseeing the city’s jails to take control of the system, effectively replacing the mayor as the person to make major decisions on safety. The 33-page plan produced by Mr. Deml’s team outlined more than a dozen steps the city’s Department of Correction would begin taking as soon as September.
The federal judge, Laura Taylor Swain, would have to approve Mr. Deml’s plan before it is put into action.
In his filing, Mr. Deml, who is called a remediation manager, wrote that dysfunction in the system is deeply rooted and will take time to fix. Running the city jails is “among the most complex operational responsibilities in municipal government, and reforming them will be no less demanding,” he said.
“But recognizing these complex dynamics does not diminish D.O.C.’s responsibility for present conditions,” he said. “Years of inconsistent leadership, eroded correctional practice and weak accountability left the Department unable to reliably perform many of its core functions.”
The new plan marks the most recent development in the decades-long effort to stem the violence and dysfunction that has plagued the city’s jail system.
In addition to the need to ensure safety at the jail complex, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is also confronting an August 2027 deadline for closing Rikers that the city appears unlikely to meet, as well as deaths at the jail.
In January, Mr. Mamdani appointed Stanley Richards, who was the chief executive of a prisoner advocacy nonprofit, to helm the Correction Department. Since his appointment, Mr. Richards, who is the first formerly incarcerated person to lead the department, has made some of the changes advocates have called for in recent years.
On Tuesday, Mr. Richards said in a statement that the work outlined in the remediation team’s plan was already underway and that he looked forward to working with Mr. Deml’s team.
Mr. Mamdani also appointed a “Close Rikers Czar” to oversee the move of pretrial detainees from Rikers Island to four borough-based jails. The czar, Dana Kaplan, is charged in part with reducing the jail population about 4,000, the amount of people that the new jails can house, and with advancing the construction of the borough-based facilities.
Mr. Mamdani has said he is committed to closing the troubled jail and has pointed to what he said was inaction under Eric Adams’s administration that led to delays in closing Rikers Island.
The problems plaguing Rikers predate Mr. Adams’s administration.
In 2015, the city agreed to federal oversight of Rikers to settle a class-action lawsuit focused on curbing the use of force and violence toward both detainees and correction officers. A court-appointed monitor, Steve J. Martin, has issued regular reports on the persistent mayhem.
For a decade, the city’s leadership struggled to show progress at Rikers as critics of the system called for a receiver. Conditions did not improve, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs and the federal monitor. Last year, Judge Swain ordered that the jail be removed from the city’s control.
In January, Mr. Martin and his team wrote that “the reform effort continues to progress at a glacial pace.” In his most recent report, filed in June, Mr. Martin acknowledged the change of the new mayoral administration and Mr. Deml’s appointment, still repeating that “there has been no material change in ameliorating the risk of harm in the jails and the reform effort continues to move at a glacial pace.”
The plan submitted to Judge Swain on Tuesday is part of a series she ordered from Mr. Deml, a former C.I.A. officer and the former head of Vermont Department of Corrections, to submit with the goal of curbing violence at the complex and bringing the system into compliance.
As part of the effort, Mr. Deml’s plan also calls for a change in the culture of the Correction Department, including the development of a framework of values “grounded in human dignity, safety and professional responsibility.” Correction staff are also working in environments “characterized by violence, trauma and significant operational strain,” Mr. Deml wrote.
In the plan, he pointed to two events that “illustrate the daily dysfunction and routine security lapses in the city jails.”
In one, during a walk-through of Rose M. Singer Enhanced Supervision Housing — the jail that houses women on Rikers Island — Mr. Deml said his team observed a housing unit “filled with smoke from fires set by individuals in custody.”
“The effect was disorienting: The smoke had a chemical odor, likely due to burning fibers or synthetic marijuana; a fire alarm rebounded off the concrete floor and walls; incarcerated individuals pounded on their cell doors, calling out to us, while others sat shackled to restraint desks,” he wrote.
An officer shrugged her shoulder at the scene, Mr. Deml said, “suggesting this was simply another day on Rikers.”
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