The Department of Correction has stonewalled a court monitor looking for answers about fire safety practices in the city’s jails, even as more than 40 fires were started by detainees over the last weeks of 2025, according to a new report.
Read MoreThe city still doesn’t have a timeline to open an already-constructed hospital jail ward meant to hold detainees with serious physical illness, despite new leadership in City Hall and the Department of Correction, who say they are fully committed to reversing the massive delay.
Read MoreA former Rikers Island correctional officer who was convicted last December of sexually abusing a woman in his Queens home was sentenced to two years in prison on Monday.
Read MoreThe number of times Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents asked the Department of Correction to give them a heads up before a detainee’s release so that they could make an arrest more than doubled during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, compared to the year prior.
Read MoreA library at the women’s jail on Rikers Island reopened this week after the resource had been shut down for nearly a year as correction officials struggled to manage a swelling jail population caused by a state prison staffing crisis.
Read MoreStanley Richards, the new DOC commissioner, sat down with the Eagle to discuss the critical moment the city, the DOC and its jails are in, as well as his philosophical approach to leading the department, how he’ll measure his performance, how he’ll address the growing number of deaths in the jails last year, and more.
Read MoreMayor Zohran Mamdani on Saturday appointed Stanley Richards, the former head of The Fortune Society, to serve as the city’s next commissioner of the Department of Correction.
Read MoreAfter more than a decade of failed reforms, mounting deaths, and repeated warnings from the courts, a federal judge on Tuesday took the extraordinary step of wresting control of New York City’s jail system from City Hall, appointing a former CIA agent and correctional expert to assume sweeping authority over Rikers Island and the Department of Correction.
Read MoreViolence on Rikers Island remains pervasive as the city waits for a federal judge to appoint a receiver to take over the jails.
Read MoreThe death toll on Rikers Island continued to rise to its second-highest point in the past four years on Monday when a 33-year-old detainee died after allegedly having an allergic reaction in the city’s jail complex.
Read MoreA Rikers Island correctional officer will be fired after being found guilty this week of sexually abusing a woman in his Queens home – a decision that comes years after he was first accused by multiple detained women of sexually abusing them while on the job.
Read MoreThe City Council this week unanimously passed a bill that would require the Department of Correction to be more transparent about its use of a work release program meant to reduce the number of people housed on Rikers Island.
Read MoreA 38-year-old man on Rikers Island became the 13th person this year to die in Department of Correction custody, agency officials announced on Friday.
Read MoreThe New York City Department of Correction has regularly violated state law by illegally confining people in jail cells for over 24 hours at a time without access to proper medical care, a new lawsuit claims.
Read MoreThe search for the person who will assume significant control of the city’s notoriously violent jails, taking power away from the mayor and Department of Correction commissioner, began in earnest on Friday.
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