When Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain ordered the parties in the Rikers Island litigation to come to a joint agreement on the potential structure and powers of a federal receiver tasked with reforming the system, we worried that this might be a tall order for two sides often at loggerheads.
That concern unfortunately came true with last Friday’s filings of separate plans for a receiver, with the city puzzlingly suggesting that current Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie should serve as the “outside” receiver to take over the system from… herself, eliciting frustration from everyone from the plaintiffs to union head Benny Boscio, albeit for different reasons.
While we agree with Boscio’s take that Maginley-Liddie is not the right choice, we disagree pretty strenuously with the rationale that this is because she has been “constantly bending to the will of the [federal] monitor time and time again.”
What Boscio really means here is that the commissioner has been too eager to attempt to comply with the common-sense recommendations of a criminal justice system professional with decades of experience, who has worked over years to painstakingly identify where the department is falling short and how it can close those gaps, often working against obfuscation and intransigence.
We’re more aligned with the plaintiffs and the Justice Department, who are seeking a fully independent receiver for the simple reason that it is Maginley-Liddie herself currently at the helm of a department that has proven unable to address its long-standing issues, apparently despite some at least good-faith efforts to come into compliance, more than her immediate predecessor could say.
That the incumbent commissioner can’t turn the ship around despite what seem like positive intentions is not a mark in favor of keeping her pushing against a seemingly unmovable object. It’s a signal that the problems are structural to a degree that perhaps no commissioner can reform the system as it exists, with its deep cultural rot, its overlapping political considerations and the weight of its own successive failures.
Change, in this case, doesn’t seem like it can ever come from within, and while we’re generally loathe to advocate for city functions being taken out of the purview of the city’s elected leadership, here we have years of inaction with deadly consequences.
Throughout this saga, we’ve taken it as self-evident that what happens to the people detained at the facility really matters. Please remember that Rikers is not meant to be a place for punishment. Most of the people locked up there are pre-trial detainees — those who have not been convicted of anything. As for the minority serving a sentence upon conviction, that sentence is never permanent injury, untreated health conditions or death.
We have a responsibility to these individuals commensurate with the weight of taking someone’s freedom away, and we must honor it, a responsibility that only becomes more acute as it gets clearer that the Rikers borough-based replacement jails will not be completed anytime soon, with the Manhattan site now being projected to be done by 2032. We need to move away from Rikers, but for now, it’s what we have, and so we must make it safe for officers and detainees alike.
