Case 1:11-cv-05845-LTS Document 988 Filed 07/14/26
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EndnotesSee November 27, 2024, Order (Dkt. 803), at 11 (finding “the unsafe and dangerous conditions in the jails” have persisted notwithstanding nearly a decade of Court-ordered reform); see also May 13, 2025, Order (Dkt. 846), at 3-5 (recounting the history of DOC’s noncompliance warranting the RM’s appointment); Homer Venters, Life and Death in Rikers Island (2019) (documenting, from the perspective of the jail system’s former chief medical officer, systemic harms produced by conditions plaguing the City jails); see generally Margo Schlanger, Civil Rights Injunctions Over Time: A Case Study of Jail and Prison Court Orders, 81 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 550 (2006) (documenting the decades-long lifecycle of correctional court orders nationwide).
Internal DOC data reflect overtime expenditures of more than $370 million for Fiscal Year 2026 (July 1, 2025- June 30, 2026).iii See, e.g., July 10, 2023, Monitor Special Report (Dkt. 557), at 12–13 (finding that the use-of-force rate and rates of violence are “far higher than in any jurisdiction with which the Monitoring Team is familiar”); id. at 17-18 (DOC staff used head strikes nearly 400 times in 2022, compared to 52 in the larger Los Angeles County jail system). iv These figures reflect internal incident data maintained by DOC for the period January 1 through May 31, 2026. “As one example, new DOC leadership worked closely with my team to restructure the Department’s organizational chart. While I was not required to amend the chart until the Court approved the Remediation Action Plan, new DOC leadership, the Monitoring Team, and I agreed: clarifying who oversees each part of the organization was critical to collectively charting a new course for the jails. As a result, in May 2026, I reversed the prior mayoral administration’s decision to fracture the Department’s investigative, intelligence, and accountability functions―a decision that created operational silos and weakened accountability among PICs and staff alike. Now these functions, covering both staff and PICs, sit in a single division under a Senior Deputy Commissioner (“SDC”). I selected the SDC, who reports directly to my team; the Commissioner and I together make final determinations on staff discipline. In consultation with the Monitoring Team, I also urged DOC to move its Administration unit, which handles officer scheduling, out of the officer chain of command and under the SDC of Administration. And the Chief of Department, the top uniformed officer, now reports to both the Commissioner and me. I view each of these changes as vital to robust individual and institutional accountability in service of reform.vi
See, e.g., Erika Harrell et al., U.S. Dep’t of Just., Bureau of Just. Stat., NCJ 250748, Indicators of Workplace Violence, 2019 (2022), https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/iwv19.pdf (reporting an average annual rate of 149.1 nonfatal violent victimizations per 1,000 workers in corrections occupations during 2015-2019-the highest rate among all occupations measured compared with 8.0 per 1,000 for workers overall).
vii See, e.g., Jeremy Travis, But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry (2005) (arguing that because nearly all incarcerated people eventually return to their communities, correctional policy should be organized around preparing them for that return); Bruce Western, Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison (2018) (documenting, through a longitudinal study of people in their first year after release, the material hardship, unstable housing, and untreated health needs that often follow unprepared reentry).
viiiSee, e.g., The Fortune Society, https://fortunesociety.org (providing reentry programming in the City jails since 1967 through staff and leadership substantially comprising formerly incarcerated people); Osborne Association, https://www.osborneny.org (providing family, education, and reentry programming inside New York City and State correctional systems).
ix DOC staff perform a wide range of functions―security posts, intake, escort, transportation, court production, hospital coverage, visit operations, and administrative assignments each of which bears on the number and type of posts the Department must fill on a day-to-day basis.
* Over the last 20 years, DOC has had seven commissioners—an average tenure of about 3.3 years, excluding the current commissioner. Since 2021 alone, the Department has had four commissioners.
xi See generally Judith Resnik, Impermissible Punishments: How Prison Became a Problem for Democracy (2025) (chronicling the American corrections profession’s construction of imprisonment around custody and control as its organizing premises); Sharon Dolovich, Exclusion and Control in the Carceral State, 16 Berkeley J. Crim. L. 259 (2011) (arguing that American incarceration is organized around the imperatives of excluding and controlling those it confines, rather than around their eventual successful return to society).
xii See Ruth Delaney et al., Vera Inst. of Just., Reimagining Prison (2018),
https://www.vera.org/publications/reimagining-prison-print-report (drawing on the German model to propose human dignity as the governing principle of American correctional policy and practice); Ram Subramanian et al., Brennan Ctr. for Just., Prison Reform in the United States (2026), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research- reports/prison-reform-united-states (documenting dignity-centered correctional reforms underway in Maine,
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