The feds are going to take over Rikers jails

What is a receivership, anyway? What does it mean for us?

Hey folks, I’m writing a short post about Big News in NYC: It seems like the feds are going to try and take direct control of Rikers jails.

Receivership advocate Hernandez Stroud at the Brennan Center has a post here explaining the concept of receivership. Reuven Blau at THE CITY also wrote an explainer last year about what this might mean. Honestly though, while these are useful articles, they really showcase how little we know about how receivership will work in this instance. Reuven noted on Twitter this week that prior examples of receivership involve fractions of a department/jail rather than an entire facility. Yet there could be more direct precedents, too; in New Orleans, a local jail was under receivership for 4 years in order to boost its compliance with the consent decree. The most recent development there is that the feds are insisting on the construction of a new mental health wing at the jail (over the objections of a pretty broad local political coalition). Considering my own opposition to jail-building in NYC, this doesn’t seem great to me! 

I have a lot of questions about this that no one seems to be able to answer. These are not rhetorical questions. 

• We’ve already got a plan to close Rikers and build new jails. The legal precedent for “closing Rikers” under city legislation has never been tested before - there’s a land use clause which says, after date X, Rikers Island can’t be used for incarceration anymore. I have previously argued that this precedent is paper-thin and can be overridden by whichever mayor is in power at that time. With that in mind, let’s imagine that the feds totally ignore city legislation and slow or completely prevent the closure of jails on Rikers. What would happen then? What does the legal precedent for that look like?

• What kind of improvements in jail conditions could we realistically expect from a receivership? I asked on Twitter how a federally controlled Rikers would be any different from the existing federal jail in NYC, which has terrible conditions. A receivership advocate quickly replied that receivership is not the same as the federal Bureau of Prisons. But the administrative point remains - how, exactly, is receivership going to make things better, if the consent decree has already failed? It seems like in New Orleans consent decree compliance improved under the receiver, but I can’t tell how many of these changes would actually matter to incarcerated people. 

• In his article, Reuven writes that getting corrections union “buy-in” was essential for past receivership arrangements. How many CO boots will the feds have to lick, and will that affect conditions improvements? 

• Could the feds order NYC to reduce its jail population? Or reduce arrests? Eric Adams is getting pretty close to doubling the jail population… If feds could prompt decarceration over his head, that would be great.

• If the feds make things worse than they already are, on the other hand – what kind of recourse would residents have to push back on that? Are we just at the mercy of lawyers now? Obviously we fucked up by electing a cop mayor, but at least we have the chance to remedy that in 2025.

Feel free to leave a comment or message me somewhere if you have an answer to this… or forward to any knowledgeable friends you might have… I genuinely want more information / think these questions need to be answered.