Will Mamdani’s new Correction Department head turn around Rikers Island?

Sign up for our FREE acclaimed newsletters!

The news mainstream media just doesn’t cover. Racial justice journalism since 1909.

Sign up

Newly-appointed NYC Department of Correction (DOC) commissioner Stanley Richards never actually applied for the job. He saw his work centered as service provider Fortune Society’s CEO and president, and felt particularly eager to partner with the city under Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

So Richards expected to recommend some candidates for the role when the administration reached out over email. Instead, he came recommended by others to lead the city’s embattled jail system, which includes facilities on Rikers Island where he was once incarcerated.

“I spoke to my wife about it because when you serve in city government, so does your family,” said Richards in an interview with the AmNews. “My wife and I discussed it. I had an interview with the mayor, the first deputy mayor, Dean Fuleihan, and the mayor’s chief of staff, Elle [Bisgaard-Church]. We had a great conversation about the things we need to do to close Rikers, keep officers safe, keep incarcerated people safe, build the borough-based jails, and reduce population.

“And I left there just [feeling] honored whether I got the job or not,” he said, “and I got a call the next day asking me, will I serve as the next New York City Department of Correction Commissioner…this is an affirming moment for New York that a man who served time in Rikers is now leading it in this administration.”

On Jan. 31, Mamdani announced the appointment. Richards now breaks his own formerly-set milestone as the highest ranking formerly-incarcerated DOC official. He previously served as first deputy commissioner under Bill DeBlasio’s administration. But Richards also makes history as the city’s first DOC commissioner under a federal takeover.

Detained and delayed

Violence and mismanagement long characterized Rikers Island, which houses almost every DOC facility and sits remotely between Queens and the Bronx on the East River.

In 2011, Bronx teen Mark Nunez sued New York City alleging DOC staff repeatedly hit him on the back of his head with a radio. A class-action lawsuit sprung from the case as other people detained on Rikers came out with similar use-of-force stories. The city ultimately settled the Nunez litigation, which led to the federal court appointing a monitor and issuing a laundry list of reforms to improve jail safety in compliance with the Constitution.

In 2019, the city committed to closing Rikers Island and building four replacement jails. The new facilities — one in each borough except for Staten Island — will be located near municipal courthouses for faster trial transport and focus on providing reentry services and safer conditions. The original plan was to close Rikers Island and open the borough-based jails by this year before delaying the closure to 2027.

But progress remains slow on both fronts under the recently-expired Eric Adams administration. The city will almost certainly miss next summer’s deadline, as some borough-based jail construction will likely run into the next decade. The current incarcerated population, which topped 7,000 last year, also supersedes the maximum 4,160 total beds planned among the four new facilities.

In late 2024, the federal judge overseeing the Nunez settlement held the city under Adams in contempt for failing to implement the necessary reforms and opened the door for a receivership. Last year, the parties discussed how a court-appointed takeover over the DOC could look like and agreed on a “remediation manager” to ensure constitutional compliance.

Meanwhile, more than 40 people detained in New York City jails died while incarcerated or immediately after release under the Adams administration.

No Man is an Island

Just days before Mamdani appointed Richards, the courts tapped Vermont’s Nicholas Deml as the remediation manager. Debra Greenberger, one of the lawyers representing the Nunez plaintiffs, says the court envisions the two working together. But Deml, a former CIA officer and corrections head, gets the final say on matters pertaining to jail safety and constitutional compliance.

“The important piece [from] our perspective is that this is a person answerable to the court absent the political processes, whose term is based on when things get done,” said Greenberger. “Not the four year turnover of a mayoral administration. And whose goal is not the competing priorities that any politician or political figure has to deal with, but the goal of safety [on] Rikers and ensuring it’s a constitutionally safe environment.”

While Greenberger did not comment directly on Richards’ appointment, she pointed to comments from her Nunez co-counsel at the Legal Aid Society. The public defense organization’s Tina Luongo was complimentary of the new commissioner. “Few people understand New York City’s jail system — and what is needed to reform it — more deeply than Stanley Richards,” they said in their statement.

Richards says he already spoke with Deml and they plan on touring Rikers Island together this week. He calls the unprecedented arrangement “a partnership that is pursuing the same goal” and believes “a rising tide lifts all boats” for reforming jail conditions.

“We have the same goal, and we’re going to do it in partnership,” said Richards. “Nick will have an office on Rikers. My office is on Rikers. We will stay in daily frequent contact. We will be working out strategies to make sure that we end up with safe jails.”

Ironically, the DOC commissioner retaining a managerial role in this partnership may stem from the Adams administration’s resistance to receivership. Oftentimes, federal takeovers can cut out the local government almost entirely, says Brennan Center Senior Fellow Hernandez Stroud.

Pairing the remediation manager with the local commissioner accounts for when the court restores city’s full control over DOC. The arrangement also keys in some input from elected officials like Mamdani — historically, judges employ receiverships only as last ditch efforts since they do not involve any direct democratic process.

“The theory is that this receivership is temporary,” said Stroud. “It’s the city government’s job to run jails in compliance with the Constitution, and so the idea is that having the government be a part of the judicial reform work will be more likely to result in sustainable changes than just having a judicially-imposed set of reforms [for the government to maintain after the case terminates].”

A bold vision

Richards hails from a criminal justice reform background, where he remains well-liked by his peers and draws much of his policy platform from. He not only envisions closing Rikers and constructing the borough-based jails, but also intends on handing over decommissioned jails on the island to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS). Subsequently, the facilities will be repurposed towards environmental justice efforts in compliance with the Renewable Rikers legislation.

The land transfers, which the Adams administration refused to execute despite city law mandates, offer a tangible step forward in the borough-based jail plan. Notably, Rikers’ biggest facility, the Anna M. Kross Center, sits empty but remains under DOC charge. Several people died last year while held at the George R. Vierno Center, which the Adams administration reopened after refusing to turn the jail over to DCAS.

Additionally, Richards vows to reduce Rikers population by working with local district attorneys to speed up cases and state prison officials to expedite transferring people whose cases are already adjudicated. Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg called him “an outstanding pick for Commissioner” and recounted working together on his office’s court-navigator program.

“I look forward to continued collaboration as we work to reduce time spent on Rikers Island for those awaiting trial, which will make the system more efficient and benefit public safety long-term,” added Bragg over email.

Richards also plans on working with Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) nonprofit providers to safely divert as many people from pretrial detention as possible and employing “every authority” under Article 6-A — an early/work release program — to screen potential candidates who can safely serve their remaining sentence out at home.

Center for Employment Opportunities Executive Vice President Christopher Watler also previously collaborated with Richards and The Fortune Society through the ATI/Reentry Coalition, and expressed excitement for his vision.

“The vast majority of people who wind up in the system do not take their case fully to a judge or jury decision,” said Watler. “They plea out along the way, because the process becomes the punishment. Stanley understands this and why that doesn’t work. He has been an advocate for policies that don’t do that [and] either divert people away from the system and for people who are coming home and making sure they get services.”

Leaving behind a fortune

With Richards leaving The Fortune Society this Friday, Deputy CEO Rob DeLeon heads up the organization as interim CEO and president. He and other reentry service provider leaders will play key roles in the city fixing and closing Rikers. Last month, Mamdani backed Fortune Society’s Just Home, a planned supportive housing development at the Bronx’s Jacobi Hospital designated for returning citizens with complex medical needs.

“I absolutely want us to continue to create more housing for individuals coming home,” said DeLeon. “We have to rise to the occasion that we want to bring down the prison population. We want to close Rikers, and we want a smaller criminal justice footprint. So in order to do that, it’s not just about receiving the people that are being released. It’s about the front door being shrunken and there being community alternatives that can receive folks and that can help them to live full lives without being involved in the system.”

Like Richards, DeLeon is also formerly-incarcerated. In fact, he first reached out to the Fortune Society not for a job interview, but while serving a bid in prison. On DeLeon’s wall hangs the original reasonable letter of assurance presented during his parole hearing from the organization he now leads.

Richards himself prepared for this moment, saying he and DeLeon built a bench in the event either left the Fortune Society. Now, he focuses on leaving behind a legacy.

“When I was growing up, it was expected that you would end up on the streets and end up in jail [or] in prison,” said Richards. “It is my hope as I chart this new path to close Rikers, build [the] borough based jails, and reduce our footprint on mass incarceration in New York City, when my grandkids grow up, their expectation will be that they’ll go to college and they’ll know that their grandfather was a vital piece in transforming what used to be mass incarceration in New York City to what we have in their generation.”