On November 27, 2024, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York held the city Department of Correction (DOC) in contempt of a consent decree and subsequent remedial orders entered in a long-running class action challenging what the Court described as the DOC’s “pattern and practice of using unnecessary and excessive force against incarcerated individuals.” Moreover, in light of ever-increasing levels of violence in DOC lockups—particularly those in the Rikers Island jail complex—plus the agency’s long history of non-compliance, the Court moved one step closer to appointing a receiver to implement reforms under court supervision.

In 2012, a group of prisoners filed the lawsuit against the DOC alleging a pattern and practice of excessive and unnecessary force in city jails. It was the sixth such lawsuit. Plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief in addition to money damages for excessive force allegedly suffered by named plaintiffs. The U.S. government, represented by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, subsequently intervened in the case in light of the severity and ongoing constitutional violations in DOC jails.

The parties reached a settlement in October 2015, stipulating to entry of a consent decree. The judgment comprised 25 sections with hundreds of provisions, requiring the DOC to take specific actions to remedy violence by staff against prisoners and to develop and implement new policies and procedures to ensure their safety and wellbeing. The parties also stipulated to the appointment of a monitor, Steve J. Martin, to oversee the DOC’s compliance with the consent decree.

Martin and his team issued “more than 50 reports” after conducting “countless site visits,” staff meetings, and data review, including “thousands of videos, reports, and investigation documentation related to use of force, other violent incidents, and other DOC operations,” the Court recalled. Martin’s team issued over 700 recommendations related to the DOC’s use-of-force practices, security protocols, supervision and training. But the DOC largely ignored these recommendations, and Martin ultimately informed the Court the DOC was not in compliance with the consent decree.

Between August 2020 and November 2021, the parties stipulated to entry of three remedial orders intended to correct the DOC’s noncompliance with the consent decree. As the Court explained, the remedial orders were necessary because, “even four years after entry of the Consent Judgment, Defendants had still failed to comply with the Consent Judgment’s requirement to implement a use of force directive, which in turn had stymied the Department’s ability to progress toward compliance with other provisions of the Consent Judgment.”

But these remedial orders did not improve conditions in City jails. In late 2021 and again in 2022, the monitoring team reported that the DOC seemed unable to implement either the consent decree or the remedial orders, and that conditions within the DOC facilities remained “unstable and unsafe.” The team recommended requiring the DOC to shift focus to addressing “foundation issues” hampering its ability to comply with the consent decree’s many requirements, including flawed security practices and procedures, inadequate supervision of staff, ineffective staffing procedures and limited accountability imposed for staff misconduct.

The monitoring team asserted that until the DOC made progress in these basic areas, the “widescale reform” envisioned by the consent decree was impossible. The report concluded that the DOC’s inability to address these foundational issues “created a polycentric problem” resulting in “a complicated set of dysfunctional practices unlike any jail system with which the Monitoring Team has had experience.”

In spring 2022, the parties and monitoring team held a series of meetings resulting in the development of an “Action Plan” intended to address the DOC’s progress related to staffing and security practices, management of people in custody and timely staff accountability. The DOC’s Commissioner agreed in open court that the agency had “significant input” on the action plan’s requirements and that it was reasonable. The parties stipulated to the plan’s adoption by the Court on June 14, 2022.

Despite narrowing the issues that the DOC was required to focus on improving, the monitoring team reported on July 10, 2023, “that the City and Department have not made substantial and demonstrable progress in implementing the reforms, initiatives, plans, systems, and practices outlined in the Action Plan.” The team recommended a series of interim measures for the DOC to implement no later than December 31, 2023, which the Court adopted in August of that year.

But the DOC failed to comply with the Court’s order and “ceased all pretext of cooperating with the Monitor”; so another order was entered on October 10, 2023, directing the DOC to “devise a plan that can be implemented immediately to ameliorate the unacceptable levels of harm in the New York City jails.” Sadly but unsurprisingly, the DOC failed to comply with this order as well, despite assurances that it would do so no later than August 2024.

The prisoner-plaintiffs, joined by the federal government, then moved to hold the DOC in contempt of the 18 individual provisions of the consent decree, remedial orders, and action plan. Citing the DOC’s long history of non-compliance and worsening conditions within its jails, the Court granted the motion.

Contempt Order Findings

The Court found that the “use of force rate and other rates of violence, self-harm, and deaths in custody are demonstrably worse than when the Consent Judgment went into effect in 2015.” For example, there were 4,652 use-of-force incidents in 2016, but that number rose to 6,784 by 2023. The Court also noted the sharp rise in stabbings, pointing out that in 2016 “there were 159 stabbings and slashings systemwide” before the number “skyrocketed to 420 and 468 in 2021 and 2022, respectively.”

Finally, “the most disturbing” statistic was the high number of in-custody deaths: 19 prisoners and detainees died in 2022, nine more in 2023, and five between January and August 2024. The monitoring team reported that, based on its review of video footage, none of the deaths were “particularly unusual or unique”; instead they were “typical of the variety of security problems that plague all the Department’s housing units[,]” including “security lapses like unsecured doors, individuals in unauthorized areas, superficial Officer and Supervisor tours, and staff being off-post or providing inadequate supervision.” The monitoring team concluded that these problems have “become normalized” by DOC staffers, who fail to recognize how their ineffective security practices “elevate the likelihood of a tragic outcome.”

In addition to the increasing violence within New York City jails, the Court also focused on the DOC’s long history of non-compliance with its orders. It specifically found “clear and convincing evidence” of the DOC’s “ineffective attempts” to: (1) implement use-of-force directives; (2) conduct use-of-force investigations and hold staff accountable; (3) correct security and basic correctional practices; (4) adequately train supervisory staff; (5) effectively deploy guards to adequately supervise prisoners; (6) curb the excessive use of Emergency Response Teams—colloquially known as “goon squads” who often respond to minor incidents with overwhelming and unnecessary force; (7) cooperate with the monitoring team; and (8) timely implement reforms envisioned by the consent decree.

As the Court explained, a contempt finding was appropriate because “[i]n the nine years since the Consent Judgment went into effect, Defendants have not only failed to comply with the Contempt Provisions, but they have also failed to police the efficacy of the efforts they have actually made to comply and have failed to modify their approaches when advised that such efforts have fallen short.” The DOC has been on notice about its non-compliance “every step of the way,” the Court added, but has turned a blind eye to “compliance with court orders.”

The Court therefore found the DOC “in contempt of eighteen different provisions of the Court orders in this case—provisions that go directly to the safety of those who live and work in the Rikers Island jails[.]” The Court next concluded that imposing financial sanctions would do little to effect meaningful change because the DOC already “pays large sums” ($37.2 million in fiscal year 2022) to settle the “many damages cases” brought against it each year. The court also declined to jail DOC supervisors until compliance is achieved, nor would it convene a three-judge panel to order prisoners released from jail, because it was “skeptical” that such remedies would compel compliance with its orders.

Instead, the Court held that any remedy for the DOC’s contempt must be aimed at addressing the “key issues that have blocked compliance with the Consent Judgment and subsequent court orders”: namely, leadership that is “insufficiently resourced”; management plagued by “a lack of continuity”; failures of “supervision and cooperation” between guards and their supervisors; a lack of “skill or imagination” needed to “create and implement transformative plans”; plus an “unwillingness or inability to cooperate” with recommendations by the Monitoring Team, thereby failing to accomplish the “urgently necessary changes in the safety profile of the jails.”

With these goals in mind, the Court determined that the “correct remedy” would be to place DOC jails under a receivership; it directed the parties to meet and confer in conjunction with the monitoring team to hash out the details of appointing a receiver—though the Court pulled many teeth from its threatened bite by including in the negotiations whether the receiver “would supplant or work alongside the DOC Commissioner.”

The Court further ordered the monitoring team to submit a status report by January 14, 2025, to which the parties would then have a week to object. So it will be February 2025 at the earliest before the Court begins the process of putting DOC jails—along with their 6,530 detainees and prisoners—under new management. PLN will update developments as they are available: See: Nunez v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Corr., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 215888 (S.D.N.Y. 2024).  

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