Judge Orders Rikers Manager Must Fix Jail in Seven Years Or Less
In the latest update to efforts to reform the long-troubled Rikers Island jail complex in New York City, Manhattan federal court judge Laura Swain issued an order to the jail’s new overseer, Nicholas Deml, to fix the jail in seven years or less.
The 28-page order gave Deml until late May to submit an initial plan to improve conditions, which includes “reversing nearly a decade of failed reforms at city jails where violence, deaths and dysfunction have only worsened since a 2015 consent decree was supposed to fix things,” The City reported.
In May 2025, Swain announced that she would appoint an independent remediation manager that would be granted broad powers and report directly to the court. This decision came after nearly a decade of ineffective oversight by court-appointed monitors that only made “use of force rates and other rates in violence, self-harm, and deaths in custody … demonstrably worse” since 2015.
Advocates have argued for years that Rikers needed someone with more power in order to produce real change, and Swain has granted Deml extensive authority in key areas. Deml, who once worked for the CIA, can now hire, fire, promote and transfer staff, and rewrite policies for the City jail system, among other leeway. He also answers directly to Swain, instead of the mayor or other New York City officials.
Deml’s charge includes overhauling use-of-force policies, investigating how guards are disciplined and young detainees are protected, as well as improving basic jail operations and conditions. The “Remediation Action Plan” due in May has been ordered to outline steps to address 18 core areas that the city was found in contempt of various court orders for.
Swain, in her order, did not explain the seven-year timeline. Detainee advocates questioned the length as being too long to ensure that the thousands of people locked up in Rikers are guaranteed basic civil rights. At least sixty-three detainees have died on Rikers since 2021, and for Anisah Sabur—lead organizer of the effort that resulted in the state HALT Solitary Confinement Act—any delay will only add to the death toll. “The longer we take, the more lives we’re going to lose,” Sabur told The City. “We urgently need different pathways, resource allocations and programs to create true public safety.”
Deadline to Close Rikers
As if to confirm Sabur’s point, two Rikers detainees died in the same week at the end of March 2026. They were the first deaths at the jail complex since New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) assumed his role earlier this year. Separate from Swain’s seven-year deadline, Mamdani faces a legal deadline to close Rikers by 2027—and it’s one that the city is unlikely to meet.
In 2019, the New York City Council passed a law to shutter Rikers within a few years shy of a decade. Former Mayor Eric Adams (D), however, neglected to set aside money for new jail construction in his budgets and spoke out against Rikers’ closing. Four smaller jails in each of New York City’s boroughs, minus Staten Island, were intended to replace Rikers. But construction was stalled at each of the build sites in Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn; it has only recently begun in Manhattan, where the jail project in Chinatown will, if completed as planned, become the world’s tallest at 300 feet. [See: PLN, March 2026, p. 54.]
In the meantime, the city’s jail population, despite dropping during the COVID-19 pandemic, has returned to its pre-pandemic level of nearly 7,000 detainees on any given day.
Sources: The New York Times, The City
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