The outside official who will be granted broad powers by a federal judge to manage New York City’s jails should be someone with extensive experience running correctional institutions, the federal monitoring team tracking violence and use of force in city lockups said Thursday afternoon in a new report.
The monitoring team issued the report after requesting multiple extensions from U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in the Nunez v. City of New York class-action case — a signal perhaps of the jockeying going on behind the scenes over the unprecedented move to wrest control of the jails from City Hall.
The team reported that 30 people applied for the post of receiver, or “remediation manager” in the lingo of the case. On Aug. 29, the monitor, led by Steve Martin, submitted a confidential report containing its shortlist for Swain’s review.
The recommendation in favor of a veteran jailer could eliminate former judges, lawyers and elected officials from consideration. But the final selection will be up to Swain, who could diverge from the monitor’s advice.
“The Office of the Remediation Manager itself must not become another entrenched obstacle that further complicates the extant labyrinth of issues,” the monitor’s report states. “Bureaucratic hurdles have long been reported as obstacles to reform, and it would be counterproductive to create a Remediation Manager structure that propagates additional layers of officialdom.”
But the monitor also noted things are in flux until Nov. 4: “The upcoming city elections in November 2025 add an additional level of uncertainty,” the report said.
In a motion submitted with the report, the city continued to build on its theme that an outside manager is a violation of the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act, which orders changes to be the least intrusive possible.
“Every provision of the Proposed Order is in derogation of state and local law because it would transfer the executive authority granted to the (Department of Correction) Commissioner by state and local law to an agent of a federal Court,” the city wrote. “Each provision of the Order must meet the PLRA’s most exacting requirement: that ‘no other relief will correct the violation’ … The Proposed Order fails to meet that standard in its entirety.”
Lawyers for detainees, who are the plaintiffs on the class-action suit, moved to stop efforts to dilute the manager’s power and accused the city of trying to undermine and reduce the role to that of a mere outside consultant.
“Defendants … seek to maintain an inappropriate level of control over the remediation manager,” the lawyers wrote, noting seven more deaths have taken place since May. “If adopted, these provisions would essentially gut the impact of the court’s order and provide a remedy in name only. The court should reject this collateral attack.”
