In a lengthy filing and multiple supplementary documents submitted to Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain last week, the city argued against the appointment of a federal receiver for Rikers Island, putting forth new Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie as the balm to cure the jail’s ills.
There is good evidence that Maginley-Liddie has taken a completely different tack than her predecessor Lou Molina, who managed to say many of the right things and then move in the opposite direction. We do not doubt her commitment or even her competence in attempting to pull the department back from the brink. What we doubt is the ability of any one commissioner to alone wrestle the teetering system into safety and proper functioning after decades of malfeasance, incompetence and cultural rot.
In its protestations against a receiver, the city has focused on this being a conceptually anti-democratic step — taking control of a large city department away from elected leaders and vesting complete authority on an unelected, court-appointed manager. We agree with that concern in principle; public representatives can be uniquely held accountable for their failures, while a receiver would be accountable mainly to the judge herself.
However, we join a significant group of proponents, ranging from the Department of Justice to defense attorneys to many elected officials, in assessing that the acute needs of the system outweigh this principle for now. The consequence of failure is not merely embarrassment or some slightly elevated cost; actual lives hang in the balance.
To appoint a receiver would not be to permanently relinquish control over the city’s jail system, but simply to cede it temporarily until a number of specific, describable and measurable improvements have taken place.
In fact, a receiver could well helm the system for less time than has already been dedicated to failed efforts to save off a need for one, with the city cyclically making promises and breaking them since the appointment of the federal monitor in 2015.
The circumstances on Rikers have only gotten significantly worse since that finding of unconstitutionality almost a decade ago. We can’t say definitively how long it might take a receiver to turn things around, but what we can say is that it’ll take that long plus how long the court delays on appointing one.
Swain has stopped short of that step at least in part due to the city’s tooth-and-nail battle against the idea. So we ask: what, exactly, is City Hall afraid of? What will be lost if a change in the management structure can stabilize Rikers before it’s returned to city control?
We’re not talking about mayoral control of schools, where it makes sense for the mayor and a chancellor to make sometimes politically unpopular decisions about policy and prioritization.
Everyone here is on the same page about what needs to happen: the violence must come down, staff must be held accountable for shortcomings and incompetence, health outcomes must be improved, the facilities must be maintained, and so on.
The core argument, then, is simply that the city, which has failed for decades to deliver, must be the one to do it. The fight isn’t worth it; rip the Band-Aid off, and accept the receiver.
