Rikers manager can’t discipline his way out of jail crisis

On this carceral chessboard known as Rikers Island, correction officers are sacrificial pawns.

They routinely work in precarious environments where departmental charges, suspensions, terminations and indictments loom like a swarm of drones while politicians and bureaucrats always find a scapegoat to avoid personal accountability for their neglect and malfeasance which caused and sustains the NYC jail crisis.

This managerial gambit leaves the uniformed force in checkmate while simultaneously protecting and praising political appointees.

Rikers is a cruel paradox where unsung heroes who freely choose to be correction officers are locked in a world of lawlessness and unable to escape the poor governance of NYC jails while having to endure endless disrespect and abuse from those incarcerated and the correction elite.

The objectives of the civilian leadership appointed to manage the Department of Correction are misguided. The public and federal district court Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain continue to be misled by federal monitor Steve Martin.

Newly appointed remediation manager Nick Deml must inform Judge Swain of the reality on Rikers.

The bureaucrats have failed and anarchy rules. And it’s virtually impossible for correction officers to succeed while being led by this decade long kakistocracy.

Deml, who is likely receiving advice from Martin and correction commissioner Stanley Richards, has taken over DOC’s Investigation Division that examines employee misconduct and probes uses-of-force.

Since Martin’s appointment, correction officers have been forced to “walk the plank," many times accepting severe disciplinary punishment under duress and resigning under compulsion, in addition to being suspended and terminated for violations that didn’t justify such excessive penalties.

Martin’s take no prisoner philosophy has done nothing but crush and oppress correction officers.

Draconian punishment isn’t the solution to NYC’s jail crisis.

There has been little progress and virtually no reform in DOC under the parti pris oversight of Steve Martin. From the beginning he held a preconceived negative opinion of the uniformed force which clouded his judgment and swayed his recommendations, decisions and reports to Judge Swain.

Martin and recent DOC commissioners were harbingers of the mayhem that today dominates Rikers.

Yet, despite their calamitous failure, Martin and his monitoring team have personally succeeded by guaranteeing job security for themselves. To date, NYC taxpayers have already wasted $25 million on them.

Martin has been “tilting at windmills."

When correction officers use unnecessary or excessive force they are held accountable. Still, the monitor’s approach to employee discipline is directed by a misguided perception that they are the enemy.

He imagines correction officers as adversaries and will continue to target them because if he stops and admits he was wrong he runs the risk of having to acknowledge the reality that he shares much responsibility for the years of carnage and unjustified administrative persecution of DOC’s uniformed force.

In March 2023 then correction commissioner Louis Molina, who was appointed in Jan 2022, testified before the City Council where he all but bragged about the number of correction officers that were suspended and terminated during his tenure.

He stated that in the last 15 months, “More than 800 members of service were suspended for misconduct, which is a greater number than the prior two years combined; and more than 250 members of services were terminated, which is more than by any Commissioner in recent years.”

I assert that many members of service were scapegoated for self-preservation and to appease the monitor.

In 2021, then first deputy commissioner Richards oversaw the Investigation Division. In that fiscal year DOC reported 1,176 assaults on staff, the most assaults in DOC’s history. And in 2022 there were 1,042, the second most.

Despite that, in 2023 during a panel discussion Richards praised the work the Investigation Division did in 2021 stating they “did an amazing job of identifying people who were falsely documenting that they were sick when they weren’t sick."

Is Richards a medical doctor?

It’s reckless and irresponsible for Richards to say they “weren’t sick." He has no standing to make that claim.

Yet in May, Richards handed out a packaged breakfast and thank you cards to employees during Correctional Officers and Employees Week.

Goody bags and thank you cards are the facade that hides the true sentiment and motive. And when the inevitable clash between current management and unions occurs that facade of support will quickly disappear like footsteps in the sand erased by the sea.

Richards’ pandering is a poor consolation prize for over a decade of condemnation, abandonment, disrespect and mistreatment DOC employees endured at the hands of politicians and five correction administrations.

Further, an insidious “good-cop, bad-cop” intrigue lurks where in public it appears Richards plays the good cop pretending to advocate for the staff to build trust and gain an endorsement while Deml is the bad cop preparing to impose harsh discipline on the uniformed force. Yet, in private I suspect Richards likely agrees with the harsh discipline and may also have already suggested to Deml that he seek a court order to eliminate unlimited sick leave in DOC.

To this day correction officers continue to face a modern day form of pillory. Not only are they scapegoated and sacrificed they’re also exposed to public scorn and ridicule.

In his report to Judge Swain, Martin labeled correction officers as “hyper-confrontational."

According to Mayor’s Management Reports, during the 10 year period from 2001-2010, before Martin was appointed monitor, DOC documented about 63,000 detainee infractions for fight/assault, 4,500 assaults on staff, 350 slashings and stabbings and 15,000 uses of force with an average detainee population of 14,000.

Compare that to the ten year period from 2016-2025 immediately following Martin’s appointment as monitor when DOC documented about 100,000 detainee infractions for fight/assault, 11,000 assaults on staff, 2,400 slashings and stabbings and 63,000 uses-of-force with an average detainee population of 7,000.

Under Martin’s monitorship, infractions for fights and assaults increased about 55 percent, assaults on staff soared 145 percent and slashings and stabbings skyrocketed 585 percent. And because of the astronomical increase in detainee violence uses-of-force more than quadrupled while the detainee population was cut in half.

The indifference of correction officials toward detainee violence encourages even more violence which results in more use-of-force.

I estimate in NYC jails half of the uses-of-force are in response to detainee violence. Theoretically, if there was no detainee violence uses-of-force would drop by 50 percent.

Accordingly, a prudent solution to reducing use-of-force is to reduce detainee violence.

Still, despite the widespread violence occurring right before their eyes correction officials and federal oversight appear to suffer from what psychologists call “object permanence” in that by covering their eyes to avoid seeing it they then believe it doesn’t exist anymore even though it’s prevalent in every jail.

And amid this overwhelming violence by incarcerated persons Martin still has the audacity to stigmatize correction officers, not the detainees, as “hyper-confrontational” and has repeatedly called for immediate suspensions and harsh discipline against the uniformed force.

Hence, his misguided approach is to steamroll ahead with misdirected determination and intensity for more severe punishment that is unreasonable and unjustifiably destroys careers while never solving nor even addressing the underlying problem of detainee violence.

For a decade, Steve Martin and DOC commissioners attempted to reduce use-of-force and gain compliance with Nunez consent decrees by means of oppressive discipline against correction officers. They failed miserably and instead generated bedlam behind bars.

Deml cannot make that same mistake.

He should use his legal authority to regain control of the jails, implement reasonable policies that aren’t counterproductive to safety, re-evaluate the use-of-force directive, reinstitute confinement for detainees with a history of jail violence and hold detainees accountable for violence committed.

Once that is accomplished the use-of-force numbers will drop faster than a stock market crash.

And even if Deml does succeed in gaining some compliance through harsh discipline he will also decimate the uniformed force and the jail crisis will continue to flourish.

In effect, Deml will achieve a pyrrhic victory where he wins the battle for discipline but loses the war for reform.