Top Correction Department leaders are actively working to undermine the court-appointed officials overseeing the troubled jail system, the federal monitor warned Thursday, accusing the commissioner and other leading figures of evading transparency and interfering with efforts to enforce a sweeping reform order.
In a scathing letter to federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain, monitor Steve Martin said recent steps taken by Commissioner Stanley Richards and his leadership team were “among the most specific, direct, and consequential actions” he has seen in more than a decade of monitoring the department.
Martin said Richards — who was appointed to lead the city’s jails by Mayor Zohran Mamdani — ordered staff not to communicate ideas or strategies to the monitor or to the Rikers Island remediation manager without first briefing the commissioner.
“The Commissioner wants all meetings with the Remediation Manager (RM) and Monitor Teams to be documented,” Richards’ chief of staff, America Canas, wrote to top leadership in an email on Sept. 1.
“Please instruct your teams to send minutes of all interactions / conversations with the Monitor or RM,” she added.
Martin, the Texas-based monitor, said his team only heard about the emailed directive through an anonymous source.
Martin was appointed by Swain in 2015 following a class action lawsuit brought by the Legal Aid Society alleging years of abuses by officers against juvenile detainees, known as the Nunez case. He issued several reports each year detailing his reform efforts — even as violence worsened in the city’s jails — leading advocates and criminal justice experts to call for the appointment of a so-called receiver who would have more power over the department to enact much-needed changes. That led to the appointment in January of Nicholas Deml, a former CIA officer and Vermont corrections commissioner, as the Rikers Island “remediation manager.”
In his letter to the judge, Martin agreed that there’s a need to track the work being done to reform the department but he added that, if implemented, the new rules would discourage private conversations flagging routine issues and drastically delay a basic exchange of information.
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“The directive would also effectively eliminate DOC personnel’s ability to have confidential discussions” with oversight officials, Martin added in his five-page letter to Judge Swain.
He called Richards’ move “an affirmative directive from department leadership that, if followed, would impede compliance with the court’s orders and materially interfere with the (monitoring team’s) and (remediation manager team’s) ability to perform their court-ordered responsibilities.”
Martin ordered the department to rescind the directive to document communication with his team and the remediation manager. Martin also instructed Corrections to issue clear guidance to staff that they are allowed to talk openly about issues they are facing and other matters.
“In the event that the City or Department fail to act or adhere to the directions set forth herein, the Remediation Manager or Monitor will immediately inform the court,” he added.
At stake are potentially groundbreaking changes to a jail system with a tragic history of violence, medical neglect and death. In July, remediation manager Deml unveiled his highly-anticipated blueprint for overhauling the system. The plan calls for hiring new investigators to police corrections officer misconduct, a $50 million expansion of educational and other programs for detainees and a pilot revamp of solitary confinement.
Notably, Martin also questioned the ability of most of the department’s leadership to enact those major changes.
“Recent actions by high-ranking DOC leadership raise questions about their judgment and approach to management…resulting in significant distraction and inefficiencies to advancing the reform effort,” he wrote.
The letter to the judge specifically called out the First Deputy Commissioner, Margaret (Meg) Egan.
“This is particularly disappointing,” Martin said, noting Egan and RIchards had previously served as members of the Board of Correction “and should understand the need for the very requirements” imposed under a 2011 federal lawsuit alleging serious abuses by officers against detainees.
The serious pushback from Martin comes less than two years after the court found the city in contempt over its handling of the federal reform orders governing the jail system.
Just months ago, Martin indicated he was excited about working with a new mayoral administration more willing to enact long stalled reforms. Former Mayor Eric Adams vehemently opposed the appointment of a remediation manager and urged jail officials to bring back the use of solitary — a punishment deemed torture by the United Nations and others — for detainees who act out.
Conversely, Richards, who was held as a detainee on Rikers Island in the late 1980s, spent years advocating for the appointment of a remediation manager to oversee reforms. He previously headed the Fortune Society, the city’s largest nonprofit serving formerly incarcerated people, and served as a member of the Board of Correction, the DOC’s primary oversight body.
After Deml’s appointment, former jail commissioners and other veteran staff questioned how the new leadership would work with a commissioner, remediation manager, and a federal monitor.
For instance, they questioned who would have final say on issues such as discipline for officers accused of serious misconduct. Those cases have traditionally been handled by the commissioner and are largely based on recommendations made by administrative law judges.
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