When a federal choose introduced final Could that she would appoint an impartial “remediation supervisor” to impose long-delayed reforms at Rikers Island, felony justice advocates hailed it as a turning level for the scandal-plagued jail system.
Eight months later, these adjustments have but to materialize — and the choose continues to be reviewing candidates for the job.
In response to a report filed in court docket Wednesday by the federal monitor overseeing the Division of Correction, the company stays mired in the identical dysfunction that prompted the court docket’s intervention practically a decade in the past.
“The reform effort continues to progress at a glacial tempo,” mentioned monitor Steve Martin, citing entrenched resistance and “pervasive poor practices.”
Martin cited latest incidents captured on body-worn digicam footage that he mentioned lay naked the “toxicity that lies on the middle of the tradition that should be reformed,” together with obvious efforts by correction officers to hide extreme drive and deceive supervisors and investigators.
In a single December incident, footage captured an officer shouting “Don’t go away marks” as employees took down a restrained detainee, in response to Martin’s report. On the identical time, one other officer appeared to kick the detainee as he lay on the bottom.
In one other case, a correction officer was seen spraying a chemical agent onto his boot inside a sanitation closet earlier than inserting the contaminated footwear subsequent to the face of a completely restrained detainee. Different employees, apparently amused, coughed and collectively pretended that no spray had been deployed, the report mentioned.
Neither incident resulted in documented accidents, and each have been categorized as low-level makes use of of drive. Nonetheless, Martin mentioned the coordinated misconduct and willingness to deceive, even below fixed surveillance, reveal a tradition “essentially incompatible with employees’s constitutional and moral obligations.”
The report exhibits why there’s a necessity for a serious change equivalent to a remediation supervisor, mentioned Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Challenge on the Authorized Help Society, and lawyer Debra Greenberger, who teamed as much as convey the 2011 class motion lawsuit that led to the court docket oversight.
Martin, who relies in Austin, Texas, was appointed in 2015.
Martin has a long time of expertise in corrections, together with serving as authorized counsel for the Texas Division of Corrections within the early Nineteen Eighties earlier than becoming a member of the Texas lawyer common’s workplace as a particular assistant centered on jail litigation.
He has additionally beforehand served as a court-appointed monitor and knowledgeable in main New York correctional instances, together with litigation over situations at Attica and Elmira and a 1998 settlement addressing abuse in Rikers’ punitive segregation unit
Martin’s 570-page report, which covers January to June of 2025, is his twentieth standing replace. Prior stories detailed failed makes an attempt to alter every thing from the division’s inside disciplinary system to how and when officers ought to use drive towards detainees who act out in a violent method.
Martin and his crew, led by Anna Friedberg, a lawyer with no earlier jail expertise, have billed the town $22 million since 2024, the most recent yr of accessible information. Martin not often visits Rikers himself and primarily depends on Friedberg and a few metropolis jail staffers assigned to help.
Supply: Decide nearing resolution
Regardless of years of destructive stories on situations at Rikers, Martin has seldom requested Laura Swain, the choose overseeing the case, to take fast motion. As an alternative, his stories have repeatedly known as out jail officers for failing to take his suggestions significantly and act with any sense of urgency.
Nonetheless, Martin has performed a key function in reviewing the finalists to function a so-called receiver — or remediation supervisor — to take over main elements of the division, in response to one individual conversant in the method who spoke on situation of anonymity.
Swain could have closing say within the choice and is predicted to be nearing a choice, one other supply mentioned.
The choose hasn’t mentioned what function Martin and his crew will play as soon as that individual is chosen. Additional complicating the matter, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has but to call a correction commissioner.
On Wednesday, Martin took some swipes on the present commissioner, Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, who was appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams in December 2023.
In response to Martin, the administration was making some progress final yr managing court docket ordered adjustments however he warned that acquainted ways had begun to reemerge as reforms stalled. That included renewed efforts to downplay in-custody deaths, excuse problematic makes use of of drive and resist the appointment of a remediation supervisor.
“DOC’s ongoing makes an attempt to perpetuate failed previous practices, authorized arguments and to normalize and decrease present situations together with makes an attempt to restrict employees’s candor and engagement with the Monitoring Crew is deeply disturbing,” the report mentioned.
Representatives for the Division of Correction didn’t instantly reply to an electronic mail searching for remark.
Martin additionally slammed the dearth of communication from jail officers, which he mentioned has compelled his crew to depend on nameless sources to find out about coverage adjustments that ought to have been disclosed by formal channels, in response to the report.
In a number of situations final yr, Martin discovered about initiatives that had not been shared along with his crew and appeared to battle with the court docket’s orders, the report mentioned.
In a single case, division officers interviewed employees to attempt to discover out who was leaking to the monitoring crew. Additionally they searched employees emails.
“Given the dynamics and the historical past of this case, it’s regarding that DOC management would undertake such an effort to find out the supply of confidential communications with the monitoring crew given its attainable chilling impact on future communications,” the report mentioned.
Martin additionally detailed a collection of violent incidents in 2025 that he mentioned underscore persistent safety lapses and insufficient supervision contained in the jails.
In a single February incident on the Otis Bantum Correctional Middle, an officer was attacked in a crowded mess corridor, struggling extreme head and facial accidents that required hospitalization in intensive care. In the course of the assault, employees struggled to regulate the realm as officers deployed a pepper spray-like substance to push again detainees making an attempt to assault them, in response to the report.
Additionally final February, a battle broke out in a housing unit on the Eric M. Taylor Middle the place a submit was left unmanned, leaving a detainee with critical facial accidents. The brawl uncovered main safety failures equivalent to unsecured doorways, improper officer escorts and delayed medical care, Martin wrote.
And in October, on the George R. Vierno Middle, a detainee suffered extreme facial accidents after officers allowed a number of individuals to maneuver freely out and in of cells on an higher tier, failing to intervene till after the assault had occurred.
“The danger of hurt to individuals in custody and employees continues to be unreasonably excessive and is mirrored in quite a lot of safety metrics, inside audits and investigative findings,” the report mentioned.
