A federal judge overseeing New York City’s violent and dangerous jails on Wednesday ordered Department of Correction leaders to meet with lawyers for prisoners to create a plan for an “outside person” who could run the system.
The judge, Laura Taylor Swain, said that she had not decided whether to install such an official, but wanted their vision of how such an arrangement might work. She gave them 45 days.
“It is clear that court orders alone have not effectively accomplished improvements on safety,” she said at a session during which she heard arguments about whether the city should be held in contempt for failing to stem violence and excessive force by correction officers.
The hearing came nearly a decade after the jails fell under federal oversight in the landmark settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by the Legal Aid Society and prisoners. The deal mandated a court-appointed monitor and regular reports on violence, which continues to plague the system. In the past two years, at least 33 people have died in jails or shortly after being released.
Rikers Island complex is one of the city’s largest institutions, and housed nearly 6,400 people last month. The Correction Department employs about 6,300 uniformed officers, who are represented by the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, a powerful union. The jails have been notorious incubators of mayhem, and thousands of New Yorkers — many of them not convicted of any crime — have passed through them.
The monitor has repeatedly pointed to New York’s failure to improve dangerous conditions there.
Last year, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, formally joined calls for the appointment of an outside authority, known as a receiver, to oversee Rikers Island.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Jeffrey Kenneth Powell, an assistant U.S. attorney, reiterated the call for a receiver and said that the city has a “history of not doing.”
“Court orders must mean something, and they must be followed,” he said. “This department has not followed them for nine years.”
Last year, the federal monitor, Steve J. Martin, filed a report saying that violence was unabated in the jails and that officials were hiding information about it. Mr. Martin took direct aim at Louis A. Molina, who had been appointed by Mayor Eric Adams to head the jails.
The following month, Mr. Martin told Judge Swain that the “pace of reform has stagnated,” and that there has “been a disturbing level of regression” in several areas, including investigations into misconduct after episodes of excessive force. Mr. Martin’s team recommended that the judge consider holding the Department of Correction in contempt.
Mr. Adams moved Mr. Molina from his corrections job in October, naming him assistant deputy mayor for public safety. Lynelle Maginley-Liddie was tapped to lead the Correction Department in December.
Alan Howard Scheiner, a lawyer for the department, on Wednesday pointed to what he said was progress over the past year in reducing violence and improving communication with the monitor’s team.
But lawyers representing the plaintiffs asked for an order of contempt based on 18 court-ordered provisions that they said the Correction Department had consistently violated. Those included not implementing rules for the use of force and failing to properly staff the jails.
The city’s failures to comply “aren’t just failures, they’re contempt,” Kayla Simpson, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, said on Wednesday.
Mr. Scheiner argued that a jail system as large as the city’s cannot eliminate violence or excessive force and that the judge should give less weight to the system’s history and more to its present state. He urged the court to wait for the next monitor’s report, scheduled to be released in November, before deciding on a takeover.
“The question is: Is the department reasonably engaged in diligent efforts now?” he said.
“I don’t know how I stand down in the face of all of this and don’t learn from history,” Judge Swain replied.
While she contemplates whether to find the agency in contempt, Judge Swain said something had to be done. Before the parties submit their ideas by Nov. 12, they must discuss whether a receiver would work with or replace a commissioner; how a receiver might be appointed; his or her tenure; and qualifications for the position, Judge Swain said. The monitor should oversee this discussion, she said.
Commissioners, appointed by mayors, have cycled in and out, and they “often try to reset the clock” on compliance, Judge Swain said.
She called the pattern a “carousel.”
In the meantime, she said, the lives of prisoners and staff “continue to be in danger.”
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