Criminal justice advocates rallied in Lower Manhattan Wednesday to demand the closure of Rikers Island as a federal judge mulls whether to hand over the city correctional facility to a federal receiver.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain held a Sept. 25 at the federal courthouse and was poised to decide whether to find the Adams administration in contempt of a federal monitor already providing oversight at Rikers, and take control of the controversial island away from the mayor amid years of inmate deaths and allegations of human rights abuses.
In preparation for the hearing, organizations like the Katal Center for Equity, Health, & Justice marched from City Hall Park that afternoon to Foley Square, where several speakers decried the alleged, ever-decaying conditions of Rikers Island — even after the Adams administration and the federal government agreed upon an action plan for improvement.
“The conditions are dirty, the shower area, the living area is awful. The medical staff, they do not attend to our needs,” Curtis Brown, a detainee currently housed at Rikers Island said via phone.
The city previously approved a law to close Rikers Island by 2027, though the timeline may be altered. Judge Swain previously considered a federal takeover in 2023, but ultimately declined.
With eight Rikers inmates having died in custody in 2024, and new claims that quality of life conditions are falling to abysmal levels, some elected officials are also calling for the feds to take charge of the embattled island.
“I visited Rikers, and I saw the despair of people who were being detained there, who had broken arms, that were untreated, who were being left to sh*t in bags — excuse my language. People were being treated as if they were not human beings,” Brooklyn Assembly Member Emily Gallagher said. “No one deserves this treatment, innocent or guilty.”
Both advocates and representatives from the Legal Aid Society argue that the Adams administration has failed to keep its pledge to close the jail and has continued to lose control over the island. In September 2012, The Legal Aid Society and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP filed NuìnÞez v. City of New York et al., a class action lawsuit challenging systemic brutality by staff against people incarcerated in New York City jails.
The hearing is ongoing with the result and is expected to be announced sometime during the evening.
