Federal takeover of Rikers Island is not the solution

Marc Bullaro is a retired NYC Department of Correction assistant deputy warden.

Ten years after the Nunez v. City of New York consent judgment went into effect, federal district court Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who oversees the consent decrees, has ruled and will appoint a so-called “remediation manager” to preside over NYC’s troubled jails. The DOC commissioner will remain and operate at the manager’s discretion.

Many insist federal control is the only solution and even tout it as a panacea. I foresee this quasi-receivership as more of the same feckless leadership and failed policies espoused and embraced by federal monitor Steve Martin.

The manager and remediation team will likely bill New York City taxpayers $2 million a year. So far about $25 million in tax dollars has been squandered on the monitor and monitoring team with little to show for it.

Swain acknowledged, “The use of force rate and other rates of violence, self-harm, and deaths in custody are demonstrably worse than when the Consent Judgment went into effect in 2015” and stated the remediation manager shall have three years “to achieve substantial compliance.” 

And who is this nonpareil who will be appointed as remediation manager yet have three years to show substantial compliance despite the jails presently being at their breaking point?

After 10 years of failure, compliance must be realized quickly, not three years from now.

Three years equates to 1,200 more slashings, 30 detainee deaths with six likely due to suicide, 3,000 assaults on staff, 24,000 infractions for fights/assaults and 21,000 uses of force.

In return, taxpayers will dish out tens of millions to the manager and their staff, the monitor and his team and for the thousands of lawsuits that are certain to arise.

How much more violence and suffering must there be before the correction aristocracy acknowledges that regaining control of the jails is not only essential but also a prerequisite to eliminating constitutional violations?

The jails aren’t safe and if the manager follows the same laissez-faire philosophy as the monitor, detainees will continue to live in imminent danger and be victimized by other detainees. And where do we go after this conceptual elixir for reform created primarily from rhetoric and theory inevitably collides with reality and once again fails to eliminate constitutional violations or even to simply reduce deaths, violence and uses of force?

For context, in Fiscal Year 2008, there were 19 detainee slashings, 6,109 infractions for fighting/assault, 427 assaults on staff and 1,915 uses of force with 13,850 incarcerated. In FY 2022 there were 491 detainee slashings, 9,248 infractions for fighting/assault, 1,042 assaults on staff and 7,080 uses of force with only 5,559 incarcerated.

I daresay the violence was exacerbated by the monitor and former DOC commissioners. Ironically, today many long for the pre-2015 levels of detainee violence that existed prior to the Nunez consent settlement and monitor’s appointment.

The majority of force used by officers is in response to detainee violence and assaults on staff. Curtailing both would significantly decrease the necessity of force and bring DOC into substantial compliance with Nunez consent decrees.

Ubiquitous gang violence and the ever-present threat of danger regularly targets detainees, eventually touching all who are incarcerated and don’t spare DOC employees, whether uniformed and non-uniformed, either. Most detainees desperately want the correction officers to be in control of the jails so they can be safe, use the phones without being stabbed, eat daily, have a blanket during winter, sleep with both eyes closed and return home without a marring facial scar.

Understandably, detainees are apprehensive and always vigilant, like deer ensconced within the protection of the forest, but for the incarcerated there’s no protective forest within which to shelter and conceal. Instead, jail management has been shipwrecked by federal oversight, which has left detainees marooned on an island of lawlessness.

Compliance is elusive because DOC policies pursuant to the consent decrees aren’t well-founded. DOC must reevaluate its policies, namely, the futile approach to restrictive housing, minimal detainee accountability for rule violations and crimes, overly restrictive use of force directives and draconian staff discipline. For a decade, ineffective policies have been an Achilles’ heel to compliance and kryptonite to success.

Meanwhile, as the judicial system moves slower than a lethargic snail, detainees and correction officers languish in violence as the slothful process meanders into its second decade with not even a glimpse of the Holy Grail nor clear sight of the substantial compliance achingly sought.

Further, the public must know that the monitor’s role has been more than that of just an overpaid statistician. He determines policy by asserting influence over DOC’s top leadership in that when he offers suggestions and recommendations they capitulate with little pushback.

Much of what the manager will implement has already been implemented by the monitor with virtually no success and in some cases has been detrimental, prompting detainee violence to soar.

Yet, it appears the monitor’s nonchalant methodology and response to detainee violence, which is largely based on theoretical solutions where concepts negate facts and hypothesis overrides expertise, is accepted as gospel by the court.

Swain asserts jail conditions “fall below the constitutional minimum despite years of supervision and support by the Monitor and his team.” I assert conditions are below the constitutional minimum because of the monitor’s supervision, not despite it.

During the last decade, federal oversight derided and locked out dedicated and qualified uniformed DOC professionals from leading, spawning DOC’s implosion. The jails saw their highest detainee violence in 30 years.

If successful, surely the remediation manager will take credit. But will he or she accept blame for incessant failure or will the manager emulate the monitor’s disregard for correction officers and firmly clutch that ace in the hole and continue to gaslight and scapegoat DOC’s uniformed force?

And although staff morale has hit rock-bottom, somehow it reaches a new low everyday as it disappears into the bureaucratic abyss that has forsaken correction officers.

Still, amid all the hardship, DOC’s uniformed force endures.