Overview
- Stanley Richards, a former Rikers detainee and longtime Fortune Society executive, was named Department of Correction commissioner and will be the first formerly incarcerated person to hold the post.
- Richards previously served as the DOC’s first deputy commissioner and on the Board of Correction, and the mayor’s office confirmed his start date as Feb. 16.
- Days earlier, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain appointed Nicholas Deml as remediation manager with broad, independent authority over Rikers operations.
- Mamdani and Richards said they will work with Deml, while the correction officers’ union urged a focus on officer safety and respect for staff rights.
- The jail system faces sustained violence and in-custody deaths — at least 76 since 2019, including 15 in 2025 — and must advance a plan to curb solitary confinement and the delayed borough-based jails replacement, with Manhattan’s facility projected as late as 2032.