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The federal monitor has said that the current state of Rikers Island “presents an unprecedented challenge…”
By Michael V. Cusenza
The federal monitor assigned to come up with a plan to bring Rikers Island out of its latest circle of hell finally released that plan on Monday.
“The current state of affairs in the jails presents an unprecedented challenge and, as such, there is no fail-safe path forward,” wrote Steven J. Martin, monitor, and Anne Friedberg, deputy monitor, wrote in a letter to the Hon. Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain.
The plan includes six core components:
Section A: Initiatives to Address the Immediate Risk of Harm. This section includes initiatives that must be undertaken immediately in order to begin to address the immediate risks of serious harm to people in custody and DOC staff, to revamp the Department’s leadership structure, to improve the supervision of Department staff at all levels, and to improve staff utilization in the short term (both by returning staff to work and by prioritizing assignments to housing units).
Section B: Citywide Initiatives to Support Reform. This section includes initiatives to ensure that the City brings all its resources to bear and removes potential bureaucratic obstacles. This includes strategies to improve the functioning of certain aspects of adjacent City agencies—such as those involved in recruiting for particular positions, hiring practices, and expediting case processing—that directly impact the Department’s ability to reform its practices.
Section C: Staffing Practices. This section requires the Department to appoint a Staffing Manager who must develop and implement a staff management system that maximizes staff availability and proper deployment in the long-term. The particular components of the system will need to be appropriately prioritized and sequenced so that the Department can effectively facilitate the assignment of staff to housing units and develop a dependable, available workforce. The Department also is also working to create an electronic system to track staff assignments and their status (e.g., vacation time, sick leave, etc.).
Section D: Security Practices. This section requires the Department to retain an individual with deep expertise in corrections who must direct a variety of security initiatives that correct long-standing deficiencies in the approach to securing facility spaces and responding to incidents. The individual who will serve as the Security Operations Manager has been selected and began working on May 16, 2022. Section E: Managing People in Custody. This section includes the appointment of a Classification Manager who must develop and implement initiatives to properly classify incarcerated persons according to their risk of institutional misconduct, to broadly disperse SRG affiliates among the housing units to disrupt their concentration of power, to decrease Intake processing time, and to effectively manage those who engage in serious violence while in custody. The individual who will serve as the Classification Manager has been selected and will begin work this summer.
Section F: Staff Accountability. This section requires additional resources for the Trials Division, expeditious resolution of cases involving egregious conduct, a reduction in the disciplinary backlog, and efforts to streamline the OATH process. It also includes requirements to revise Command Discipline procedures and to impose discipline for those who abuse the Department’s policies regarding various type of leave and restricted duty.
Section G: Assessment of Compliance and Reporting. This section describes the Monitoring Team’s shift to more frequent reporting on this more narrow scope of issues, so that the Parties and the Court are fully informed about the intricacies of each initiative.
