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New York City Mayor Appoints Ex-Rikers Prisoner as Corrections Commissioner

Loaded on March 1, 2026 published in Prison Legal News March, 2026, page 14
Filed under: Prison Reform, Staffing, Control Units/SHU/Solitary Confinement, Guard Unions, Administrative Detention/Segregation. Location: New York.

On January 31, the recently elected New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) announced the appointment of Stanley Richards, who was locked up at Rikers Island multiple times in his youth, as the commissioner of the city’s Corrections Department (DOC). Richards turned his life around in the early 1990s and recently served as President and CEO of the Fortune Society, a large nonprofit that supports former prisoners and advocates for alternatives to incarceration. He had previously held the role of deputy commissioner of the DOC during the last six months of the Bill de Blasio administration in 2021.

During his brief tenure as deputy commissioner, Richards—the first former prisoner to attain a senior leadership role at the DOC—was fiercely attacked by the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association (COBA), the union that represents New York City’s jail guards. The ire toward Richards, alongside then-DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi, provoked more than one thousand jail guards to call out sick for long stretches of time while he was in office, leading to a staffing crisis.

Mamdani’s decision to hire Richards marks a sharp turn from the administration of previous Mayor Eric Adams, who aimed to bring back solitary confinement. Chief among Richards’ priorities, according to The City, will be to issue a roadmap to end the use of solitary, nearly five years after a City Council law ordered the change.  

 

Source: The City

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