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 MoreA 39-year-old man died on Rikers Island on Thursday, marking the first death in the dangerous jail complex this year and the first since Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office.
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 MoreThe court-appointed remediation manager responsible for addressing the deeply rooted dysfunction and violence on Rikers Island is expected to cost taxpayers nearly $10 million for his first full year of work.
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 MoreCity Hall last week unveiled a plan it says will finally bring the city into compliance with long-suspended jail oversight rules and a local law banning solitary confinement on Rikers Island.
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 MoreMore than two years after city jail officials cut off nonprofit-led social services at Rikers Island, several organizations are set to return this month to provide new programming inside the troubled jail complex.
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 MoreJail watchdogs found that correctional officers and medical staff on Rikers Island abandoned their posts and failed to check in on suicidal detainees in the lead up to a number of deaths in the dangerous jail complex last year.
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 MoreMayor Zohran Mamdani late Monday renewed a long-running state of emergency on Rikers Island, signing an executive order he acknowledged would prolong a controversial legal workaround used by his predecessor for years to skirt rules dictating how the city should treat detainees.
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 MoreThe sweeping powers of the yet-to-be-named receiver that will soon assume control over much of the city’s jail system were detailed in a recent ruling from a federal judge.
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