When a federal judge announced last May that she would appoint an independent “remediation manager” to impose long-delayed reforms at Rikers Island, criminal justice advocates hailed it as a turning point for the scandal-plagued jail system.
Eight months later, those changes have yet to materialize — and the judge is still reviewing candidates for the job.
According to a report filed in court Wednesday by the federal monitor overseeing the Department of Correction, the agency remains mired in the same dysfunction that prompted the court’s intervention nearly a decade ago.
“The reform effort continues to progress at a glacial pace,” said monitor Steve Martin, citing entrenched resistance and “pervasive poor practices.”
Martin cited recent incidents captured on body-worn camera footage that he said lay bare the “toxicity that lies at the center of the culture that must be reformed,” including apparent efforts by correction officers to conceal excessive force and deceive supervisors and investigators.
In one December incident, footage captured an officer shouting “Don’t leave marks” as staff took down a restrained detainee, according to Martin’s report. At the same time, another officer appeared to kick the detainee as he lay on the ground.
In another case, a correction officer was seen spraying a chemical agent onto his boot inside a sanitation closet before placing the contaminated footwear next to the face of a fully restrained detainee. Other staff, apparently amused, coughed and collectively pretended that no spray had been deployed, the report said.
Neither incident resulted in documented injuries, and both were classified as low-level uses of force. Still, Martin said the coordinated misconduct and willingness to deceive, even under constant surveillance, reveal a culture “fundamentally incompatible with staff’s constitutional and ethical obligations.”
The report shows why there’s a need for a major change such as a remediation manager, said Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society, and attorney Debra Greenberger, who teamed up to bring the 2011 class action lawsuit that led to the court oversight.
Martin, who is based in Austin, Texas, was appointed in 2015.
Martin has decades of experience in corrections, including serving as legal counsel for the Texas Department of Corrections in the early 1980s before joining the Texas attorney general’s office as a special assistant focused on prison litigation.
He has also previously served as a court-appointed monitor and expert in major New York correctional cases, including litigation over conditions at Attica and Elmira and a 1998 settlement addressing abuse in Rikers’ punitive segregation unit
Martin’s 570-page report, which covers January to June of 2025, is his 20th status update. Prior reports detailed failed attempts to change everything from the department’s internal disciplinary system to how and when officers should use force against detainees who act out in a violent manner.
Martin and his team, led by Anna Friedberg, a lawyer with no previous jail experience, have billed the city $22 million since 2024, the latest year of available data. Martin rarely visits Rikers himself and primarily relies on Friedberg and some city jail staffers assigned to assist.
Source: Judge nearing decision
Despite years of negative reports on conditions at Rikers, Martin has seldom asked Laura Swain, the judge overseeing the case, to take immediate action. Instead, his reports have repeatedly called out jail officials for failing to take his recommendations seriously and act with any sense of urgency.
Still, Martin has played a key role in reviewing the finalists to serve as a so-called receiver — or remediation manager — to take over major parts of the department, according to one person familiar with the process who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Swain will have final say in the selection and is expected to be nearing a decision, another source said.
The judge hasn’t said what role Martin and his team will play once that person is selected. Further complicating the matter, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has yet to name a correction commissioner.
On Wednesday, Martin took some swipes at the current commissioner, Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, who was appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams in December 2023.
According to Martin, the administration was making some progress last year managing court ordered changes but he warned that familiar tactics had begun to reemerge as reforms stalled. That included renewed efforts to downplay in-custody deaths, excuse problematic uses of force and resist the appointment of a remediation manager.
“DOC’s ongoing attempts to perpetuate failed past practices, legal arguments and to normalize and minimize current conditions in combination with attempts to limit staff’s candor and engagement with the Monitoring Team is deeply disturbing,” the report said.
Representatives for the Department of Correction did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Martin also slammed the lack of communication from jail officials, which he said has forced his team to rely on anonymous sources to learn about policy changes that should have been disclosed through formal channels, according to the report.
In several instances last year, Martin learned about initiatives that had not been shared with his team and appeared to conflict with the court’s orders, the report said.
In one case, department officials interviewed staff to try to find out who was leaking to the monitoring team. They also searched staff emails.
“Given the dynamics and the history of this case, it is concerning that DOC leadership would undertake such an effort to determine the source of confidential communications with the monitoring team given its possible chilling effect on future communications,” the report said.
Martin also detailed a series of violent incidents in 2025 that he said underscore chronic security lapses and inadequate supervision inside the jails.
In one February incident at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, an officer was attacked in a crowded mess hall, suffering severe head and facial injuries that required hospitalization in intensive care. During the attack, staff struggled to control the area as officers deployed a pepper spray-like substance to push back detainees trying to attack them, according to the report.
Also last February, a fight broke out in a housing unit at the Eric M. Taylor Center where a post was left unmanned, leaving a detainee with serious facial injuries. The brawl exposed major security failures such as unsecured doors, improper officer escorts and delayed medical care, Martin wrote.
And in October, at the George R. Vierno Center, a detainee suffered severe facial injuries after officers allowed multiple people to move freely in and out of cells on an upper tier, failing to intervene until after the assault had occurred.
“The risk of harm to people in custody and staff continues to be unreasonably high and is reflected in a variety of security metrics, internal audits and investigative findings,” the report said.
