If the Rikers Island crisis is a raging fire, New York City, over the course of multiple mayoral administrations, has spent years essentially tuning out the alarm while letting the sprinklers run. This is an emergency, and it is time to break the glass and reach for our last resort: a receiver empowered to truly overhaul the misbegotten, mismanaged jails.
Federal monitor Steve Martin has diligently put out thorough reports, more than a dozen since his 2015 appointment, detailing rampant violence and chronic absenteeism and persistent management failures, under commissioner after commissioner, with very little improvement. Costs are higher than in any other large municipal jail system in America. Staff-to-inmate ratios are higher, too. City leaders are focused on the crisis. No matter: So entrenched is the dysfunction, the place can’t turn the corner.
Martin is an undisputed expert and his recommendations are eminently sensible, but recommendations that the city cannot or will not carry out are frankly not worth the paper they’re printed on. All the while, New Yorkers are being grievously harmed or killed; 16 inmates died last year, with three deaths so far this year. Correction officers are both well-meaning, hardworking victims of a broken system where detainees run amok and themselves part of the problem, as their union prevents reforms and defends mass sickouts.
A letter sent this week by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams to the federal judge overseeing the settlement displays the clear exasperation of having watched years of promises go unfulfilled, and for the first time lends the federal prosecutors’ support for putting the system into receivership.
We don’t take lightly the idea of city voters, and Mayor Adams, effectively losing control over a major piece of municipal government. But a court-appointed official would be uniquely empowered to rewrite nonsensical rules, restructure existing union contracts and make the place reasonably safe for detainees and correction officers alike.
At this point, that bold stroke seems like the only thing that can put out the fire. Break the glass and get the hose.
