Can a Court’s ‘Last Resort’ Fix New York City’s Jails?

A federal judge is likely to employ a rarely used remedy to try to fix longstanding problems in the city’s jails. But it’s not foolproof.

Conditions in Alabama’s prison system had been so miserable, for so long, in 1976 that a federal judge took the unusual step of appointing an outside authority to fix them.

By the time the administrator, who happened to be the state’s governor, was discharged in 1989, the prison system experienced improvements that experts called remarkable and innovative. But the progress didn’t last, and the federal government had to once again intervene.

What happened in Alabama and other jurisdictions is now being studied after a federal judge signaled that she is likely to appoint a third-party administrator, known as a receiver, to take control of New York City’s troubled jail system, a last resort that courts have used only when other remedies have been exhausted.

The judge, Laura Taylor Swain, held the city in contempt on Wednesday for failing to carry out court orders to fix persistent problems at Rikers Island after nearly a decade of federal oversight. Since 2015, the jail complex has been operating under the supervision of a federal monitor who has been sounding alarms about worsening violence, unnecessary deaths in custody and ineffective management.

Hernandez D. Stroud, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said he expected the judge to impose a receiver in the coming months. Judge Swain has expressed frustration with the city’s lack of progress, and she has already asked for comment on the potential receivership from the city and from lawyers representing detainees who sued over conditions in the jails.

“For her to make these sorts of pronouncements, and then say, I don’t know what else to do — the monitor’s reports are still bad,” he said, paraphrasing the judge. “There’s only one tool left on the table.”