The Essential Role of Judges in the Effort to Close Rikers Island

Rikers Island has been the subject of considerable public attention and concern in recent years. Dangerous and often inhumane conditions plague the notorious jail complex, leading an independent blue-ribbon commission to recommend that it be scrapped and replaced by several smaller, decentralized jails throughout the city. That plan has been endorsed and accepted by two successive mayoral administrations. Meanwhile, in response to rising violence against Rikers inmates and jail staff, the federal judge handling a lawsuit brought to address these conditions has now ruled that she will wrest control of the facility from the City and appoint a “receiver” to run the jail.

The great majority of individuals held on Rikers Island are charged with violent crimes, and they are being detained there pending resolution of their cases because they are unable to make bail or have been “remanded” without the option of bail. The size of this group is a crucially important element in any effort to reform New York City’s jail system. The plan to replace Rikers with four smaller local facilities, for example, is premised on a maximum total inmate population of 4,160 — a number that would be politically difficult, if not impossible, to increase. Yet the current Rikers population is currently more than 7,000. The overwhelming number of these individuals are not only charged with violent crimes but have a history of serious violence, making it extremely challenging to control jail violence, be it by the existing Rikers management or by the receiver the federal court will now be appointing.

This grim reality underscores the pivotal role of the judges who are responsible for deciding whether individuals charged with bail-eligible offenses will be released or detained at Rikers pending resolution of their cases. While bail rulings made every day by judges directly impact the size of the Rikers population, it is important to understand that judges, in making these determinations, are constrained by statutorily prescribed factors that call for complex, case-by-case analyses. The statutory factors do not include whether the bail ruling will impact jail populations, and therefore, judges do not factor that criterion into their determinations.  

Nonetheless, there is much the New York courts can do to help mitigate the circumstances plaguing the continued detention of inmates at Rikers Island. It starts with efficient case management — one of the court system’s core responsibilities. Court leaders are empowered to implement measures that ensure speedier resolution of pending cases in order to avoid prolonged pretrial detention. Perhaps the most far-reaching effort in recent years of this nature was the comprehensive program announced by former New York Chief Judge Janet DiFiore when she took office in early 2016. Dubbed the “Excellence Initiative,” this program was a systemwide focus on speeding case management, eliminating backlogs and delays, increasing productivity and improving court services. As Chief Administrative Judge, I oversaw the day-to-day operations of this program. Over the four-year period from 2016 through 2019, just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the program substantially reduced, and in some instances even eliminated, backlogs and delays for all case types, including the felony-level courts in New York City.

So what precisely was done? While the steps taken were relatively simple, they added up to something significant. We prioritized leadership, data collection and analysis, and accountability. We developed sophisticated case management dashboards that displayed up-to-the-minute data on the status of all cases, enabling judges to better manage and control their individual case inventories. The mindset was simple: “what gets measured gets addressed,” with particular emphasis on managing and resolving older cases. 

The data on individual judges’ case inventories as well as aggregated court-wide data for individual courts were shared on a weekly basis with the administrative judges who supervise New York’s courts at the county and local levels. Senior court leaders met regularly with administrative judges, both individually and as a group, to review the data, identify problems causing backlogs and delays and develop strategies and solutions to eliminate roadblocks.  Administrative judges in turn met with individual judges on a regular basis to review their caseloads, reinforce goals and discuss how to continue making progress.

In addition to the Excellence Initiative’s systemic focus on case management, more localized programs were implemented to address backlogs. In New York City’s boroughs, individual judges or small groups of judges recognized as especially experienced and skillful in facilitating case settlements were assigned to resolve the system’s oldest cases. Prosecutors and defense counsel were informed that any cases that could not be settled would be assigned for immediate trial. This measure quickly resolved many hundreds of the city’s oldest felony cases, demonstrating — perhaps counterintuitively — that backlogs of older cases can be substantially reduced without necessarily increasing the number of trials. In fact, it strongly suggested that the threat of an immediate trial is often as effective as an actual trial in resolving older cases. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it was clear that strong, focused leadership at the highest levels of the court system is essential to eliminating backlogs and delays. From the chief judge and on down the leadership ladder, great pains were taken to explain and prioritize the goals of the Excellence Initiative to judges, the bar, other justice system stakeholders and the public.  

The challenges attendant to the closing of Rikers Island are many. Central to the success of the City’s plan is the prompt resolution of pending cases that linger and often cause individuals to be detained in pretrial custody for years before they are moved off the Island. Effective operational steps implemented under the Excellence Initiative produced undeniably positive results. In the four-year period leading up to 2020, the overall number of pending felony cases was reduced by one-quarter. The number of older cases (i.e., older than six months) — the more important number because it included many of the cases pending against individuals detained at Rikers — declined by nearly 40%.  There is every reason to conclude that had the pandemic not struck, causing many court operations to be curtailed for over two years, the Excellence Initiative would have continued to produce reductions of the felony case backlog and, as a consequence, continued to reduce the number of detainees on Rikers.

It is no coincidence that the detainee population on Rikers was nearly cut in half during the course of the program’s run from 2016 to early 2020. Effective management works. The Excellence Initiative was not a complicated program; it was labor-intensive, but it was not complex. For the most part, it was carried out with existing resources, and little to no additional expenses. It required a sustained focus on collection and careful consideration of detailed caseload data. And it required strong leadership and accountability — not only on the part of judicial leaders and supervisors but on the part of individual judges assigned to handle these cases. 

Rikers Island presents some of the greatest challenges in our city’s criminal justice system. The courts have an important role to play in helping resolve some of those problems and in supporting the City in finally realizing its plan to shut down the facility. Court leadership should strongly consider the re-institution of the most effective features of the Excellence Initiative, especially with regard to Rikers cases. There is much to be learned from the successes of the recent past, and we ignore those lessons at our peril. The courts have demonstrated that they can step up when needed to. Now is one of those times.