NYC Unveils New Rikers Plan As Potential Federal Takeover Brews

NEW YORK CITY — A last-ditch city plan doesn't go far enough to solve Rikers Island's woes, advocates argued — and, if a judge agrees, the troubled jail could be put under federal control.

City officials unveiled a 28-page "Final Action Plan" last week they argued would lead to "meaningful reform," according to court filings.

The plan submitted to federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain promises steps to reduce violence, install new cell doors, deal with staffing shortages, among other problems that have plagued the jail.

But advocates from The Legal Aid Society — and, to a lesser extent, court-appointed federal monitor Steve Martin — argued the plan is filled with vague and hollow promises that won't help solve the jail's long-standing issues.

"While the Plan may offer a 'road map,' the City has shown it is unwilling or unable to take the necessary steps along the road," a response by Legal Aid attorneys states.

Rikers Island has long been notorious for its awful conditions and dysfunction.

Concerns over those long-standing problems — which had already prompted a judge to appoint Martin as an effective overseer for city officials' reform efforts — reached a fever pitch last year as staffing shortages, overcrowding and ever-deteriorating conditions prompted some officials to deem Rikers as in the midst of a full-blown "humanitarian crisis."

Mayor Eric Adams has inherited those problems with Rikers, but federal officials have accused his new jail leaders of not attending critical meetings or providing specific plans for dealing with the jail.

The perceived inaction has raised the potential that of a federal takeover, as proposed in April by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.

The city's action plan aims to assuage those concerns.

"The Plan is a road map to sustainable reform and to the stabilization of the Department," city officials wrote in a court filing.

"It is a plan that will ensure the safety of all those who live and work at Rikers."

Martin, for his part, praised much of the plan as "viable pathway forward."

But he tempered his plaudits with a stark acknowledgement that there were "decades of mismanagement, quagmire of bureaucracy, and limited proficiencies of many of the people who must lead the necessary transformation" at the jail.

"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," he wrote.

Legal Aid attorneys — who were involved in a 2015 lawsuit that led to a court-appointed monitor for the jail — were even less forgiving.

They blasted jail leadership for letting a backlog of 1,900 disciplinary cases against guards pile up. Doing so reflects a "lack of political will or imagination" necessary to overcome entrenched dysfunction, they wrote.

"More globally, the Plan is replete with vague commitments to revise policies in undefined ways, but it is almost silent on concrete actions or timelines for implementation of these new policies," they wrote.

"This is most glaring in the provisions that seek to address the most immediate and extraordinary barrier to relief: the absence of sufficient staff to provide basic daily supervision of the jails."