For the first time since its founding over 400 years ago, New York City soon won’t run its own jails. Instead, a federal judge will.
In May, after finding the city in civil contempt of several court orders to stem excessive force and violence, Chief U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain temporarily stripped the city’s authority over its jail system, which includes the sprawling Rikers Island complex. The judge later this year is set to appoint an independent, outside official, who will be charged with bringing the beleaguered institution into legal compliance. Swain calls the court appointee a remediation manager, but practically speaking, they’ll be a correctional receiver — someone whom a court temporarily empowers to remediate acute and persistent legal violations within a jail, prison or juvenile detention center or some part of it.
Insulated from political pressure and “empowered to take all actions necessary,” the manager will report to the judge alone. They’ll boast broad authority to shape jail operations, focusing on aspects that’ve proved most resistant to change — chief among them, staffing and security practices. But that authority won’t be unbounded: Swain will require the manager to work with the jail system’s commissioner, the city correction department’s leader, to improve conditions.
That sort of hand-in-glove collaboration could encourage enduring change.
Imagine a receiver doesn’t work with the government and manages to improve a jail’s healthcare processes. The receiver only uses high-dollar reforms. When the government reassumes control, though, it abandons the upgraded care. The reason? The receiver’s reforms, while effective, are too expensive to sustain.
Was this receivership successful? Yes and no. True, it improved conditions, the goal of every correctional receivership. But at what cost? If the government can’t plausibly maintain a receiver’s gains, the mechanism defeats itself, perpetuating a vicious cycle of backsliding, neglect, and costly litigation.
A commissioner can help a receiver identify and adopt lasting, pioneering changes, navigate thorny political thickets, and focus on institutional functions outside a receiver’s remit. Of course, courts nowhere can guarantee the government’s long-term commitment to basic human dignity behind bars; but they can surely make that prospect more likely.
Since 1979, judges have taken temporary control of jail, prison, and juvenile detention operations from state and local authorities through receivership just 14 times. There are three active receiverships — two for California’s prison medical and psychiatric care systems and one for the Hinds County Jail serving Jackson, Mississippi. A Miami-Dade County Jail receivership recently ended, and Arizona’s prison medical care system and the Los Angeles County Juvenile Halls are both facing calls for receivers in federal and state courts, respectively.
Swain’s decision to seize the jails comes nearly a decade after they fell under federal court oversight as part of the settlement in Nunez v. City of New York, a class-action lawsuit. In 2015, the city settled the case, avoiding trial. It agreed to implement a spate of court-enforceable reforms to reduce excessive use of force and violence. Yet in virtually every relevant respect, Swain recently observed: No “interventions [have been] sufficient to push the [Department of Correction] toward compliance” over these past years.
And that failure has turned into real tragedy. Since the Nunez settlement took effect, 112 people have died in the city jails or shortly after their release. That count includes this year’s nine deaths, which is nearly double the number of detainees who died in all of 2024. And many of these deaths — like that of Michael Nieves, who sliced his throat with a razor and bled to death as jail staff watched — were preventable.
Still worse, the city’s jail population is steadily rising, and that by itself makes it hard to run a decent system. Today, more than 7,400 people are in the New York City jails, a nearly twofold increase since a low of under 4,000 in 2020. The inhumane conditions at Rikers further stun given the annual cost of $500,000 to detain just one person, which is many times more than the average in other large U.S. jails.
Enacted in 2019, a local law had mandated the city to shutter and replace Rikers with four smaller jails situated in the boroughs except Long Island, which could alleviate some problems. The law set a 2027 deadline, but because of construction delays, neighborhood resistance, and ballooning costs, that plan no longer holds. Some reports put the completion of construction closer to around 2032.
So, what’s next?
People seeking to be the remediation manager have applied, and the lawsuit’s parties — the Legal Aid Society and federal prosecutors for the plaintiffs, the city as the defendant — are supposed to be evaluating applications. And so is the court-appointed monitor, who has assessed conditions over the past decade and will continue to do so during the takeover process. By the end of August, both parties may recommend up to four manager candidates for Swain’s ultimate consideration.
Yet as the selection process unfolds, the city is all the while urging Swain to modify her decision appointing manager. Evidence, it claims, fails to demonstrate the absolute necessity of the move, which is legally required. If Swain disagrees, the city has indicated it might ask the federal appeals court to review the measure, which could delay, modify, or invalidate the manager’s appointment. There’s also a flipside possibility: City residents this fall could elect a different mayor who could withdraw an appeal, clearing the way for the process to proceed.
Rikers Island, Mayor Eric Adams said, “has been a national embarrassment, and we have ignored it. For far too long, the situation there has been unacceptable.” And he’s right. Judicial intervention offers the chance to disentangle the dysfunction, however politically fraught. And it would hopefully prevent the spread of the odious culture that has long infected Rikers to the four jail facilities under construction. But the judicial role is limited and here, also temporary. Only the city can — indeed, must — ensure the abiding dignity of the people who work and live in its jails.
