NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- The Legal Aid Society, which represents inmates at Rikers Island, said on Friday that the city’s court-ordered plan to reform the troubled prison is insufficient, and the prisoners’ lawyers intend to request a federal receivership take control of the facility in order to force change.
The Department of Correction released a 30-page action plan on Friday to end chronic understaffing, violence, abuse by guards and poor conditions at the prison.
Friday’s submission is a revised version of a mid-May plan that failed to convince Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain that the city is capable of reigning in the human rights crisis at Rikers.
This is the DOC and Mayor Eric Adams’ last chance to avoid federal intervention to force changes upon the facility.
“In light of the City’s continuing failure to comply with the Consent Judgement and remedial orders and our view that the Action Plan will not cure the unconstitutional and unsafe conditions for our clients, Plaintiffs believe it is necessary to move for contempt and for appointment of a receiver,” wrote LAS President Alan Levine to Swain.
The city’s plan includes changes to housing practices in order to reduce gang affiliated violence, increased searches and supervision, some minor facility maintenance, a push to increase staff, revision of medical leave policies to address absenteeism, increased supervision of correctional officers and leadership restructuring.
The LAS did not object to any of the steps outlined in the plan, but argued they don’t go far enough to protect prisoners.
The letter to Swain took particular issue with the leadership restructuring plan, which fails to heed a federal monitor’s request to search for leadership candidates outside of the DOC.
“The Monitor has long described how the profound deficiencies in facility leaders — all of whom came up through this abusive, dysfunctional system — have frustrated compliance with the Consent Judgement and First Remedial order, and therefore made a formal recommendation over a year ago to expand the warden hiring pool,” wrote Levine.
Adams expressed contentment with the plan, and argued changes already made to Rikers are having an impact.
“Since taking office and working with the monitoring team, we have seen reductions in slashings and stabbings, reductions in use of force and assaults on staff, increased searches for weapons and contraband, and fewer officers out on sick leave, but we must go much further,” said Adams in a statement. “As our updated, detailed plan makes clear, with the proposed time, we have a strategy to aggressively untangle the dysfunction that has plagued the island and set it on a path of real and enduring reform.”
A spokesperson for New York City’s Law Department said “The proof of our Action Plan will be in its results, many of which are already trending in the right direction.”
Steven J. Martin, the federal monitor appointed to oversee the prison, said the plan represents a “viable pathway forward” but that the steps “may not be sufficient to bring about the magnitude of change that is necessary to reform the agency.”
“This combined with the Monitoring Team’s serious concerns about the current conditions of the jails means the Monitoring Team cannot warrant that the Action Plan alone will be sufficient to address the danger, violence, and chaos that continue to occur daily,” wrote Martin in a letter to Swain.
It is now up to the court to decide whether the plan is acceptable and can be implemented by the city’s Rikers reform task force, or if federal intervention is necessary — either by way of a receivership or other court orders.
Receiverships like the one requested by the LAS have been used to fix problems at the Fountain Correctional Facility in Alabama in 1976 and Wayne County Jail in Michigan in 1989, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
It’s a dramatic step only taken when the federal government has no confidence that a prison’s local administrators can end human rights abuses at a prison.
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