The mayor who first declared in an Emergency Executive Order that there was a state of emergency existing in Department of Correction facilities, including on Rikers Island, was Bill de Blasio, on Sept. 15, 2021. That emergency has remained ever since, renewed every five days, first by de Blasio for the balance of his term and since Jan. 1, 2022, by the current mayor, Eric Adams.
The emergency can really only end when a federal judge decides that Rikers should be handed over to a court-appointed receiver to run the place, which will hopefully happen soon. We would think that the terrible local federal lockup, Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, should also get new management.
As to Rikers, over the weekend, Adams renewed the Emergency Executive Order again (we estimate it was his 188th time) and added to it by suspending some of the ill-founded constraints on Rikers management imposed by the City Council. The measures, about the use of solitary confinement, were passed over Adams’ proper veto and set to take effect. So the mayor said no, as implementing the Council’s ban would have been detrimental to maintaining order and safety in the jail, endangering both the detainees and the correction officers guarding them.
Adams said that he acted because, “It is of the utmost importance to protect the health and safety of all persons in the custody of the Department of Correction and of all officers and persons who work in the City of New York jails and who transport persons in custody to court and other facilities, and the public.”
We don’t need to get into all the details here and rely on the words of Steve Martin, the expert federal monitor overseeing Rikers.
Martin wrote that he opposes solitary confinement and has “been at the forefront of the national effort to reduce and eliminate the use of solitary confinement in adult and juvenile systems.” However, Martin concluded that Council went much further, requiring that detainees be released from “de-escalation and emergency lock-in” within four hours and from restrictive housing within 30 days, no matter the specifics or danger of the situation. Martin wrote that the ban would “exacerbate already dangerous conditions.”
In striking down part of the Council’s Local Law 42, Adams modified that portion of the law that prevented the placement of detainees in restrictive housing for more than 60 days during the course of any 12-month period, changing it to a review of detainees’ placement in restrictive housing every 15 days.
To push back against the mayor, the Council can go to state court to challenge Adams’ Emergency Executive Order (actually, he issued three of them related to Rikers on Saturday). But the real venue for the future of Rikers belongs in the courtroom of Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain.
Swain will be deciding on whether or not to appoint a receiver, an action supported by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, state Attorney General Tish James and a host of advocates and observers. This is no slight against Adams and Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, who are trying as best they can in an impossible situation.
A receiver can cut through bureaucratic rot and decades of built-in bad practices, protecting the detainees and the officers. Judge Swain, over to you.
