Rikers Island’s new remediation manager, who was named on Tuesday, will have authority even beyond that of the city\u2019s correction commissioner to push forward reforms \u2014 in an appointment that marks one of the most aggressive steps yet in a decade of federal oversight of the troubled jail complex.<\/p>\n
Former CIA agent Nicholas Deml comes into the job with praise: Prisoner advocates in Vermont, where he served as commissioner of the state’s Department of Corrections from 2021 to 2025, described him as transparent and forthright.<\/p>\n
Some New York City reformers have sounded a note of optimism for Deml, but said his name had not been widely circulating within Rikers reform circles before the announcement.<\/p>\n
They also caution that previous efforts to reform Rikers have failed, and any pushes for rapid and extensive change by Deml will depend on buy-in from the city government.<\/p>\n
Despite years of monitoring, a federal court has repeatedly found that violence, staff misconduct and systemic failures remain dangerously high.<\/p>\n
A biography attached to U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain\u2019s order appointing Deml describes him as a \u201cnational thought leader on correctional leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
He comes to the role from outside New York City politics. In Vermont, he oversaw a system far smaller than New York\u2019s jails. Before that, he worked as an operations officer at the CIA and as an aide to Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin on the Senate Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n
Swain has given the city and Deml 21 days to deliver a report outlining the manager\u2019s compensation, staffing and preliminary budget.<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has yet to name his corrections commissioner, but spokesman Joe Calvello said the mayor \u201clooks forward to working closely and collaboratively with the new remediation manager to improve conditions on Rikers Island.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deml\u2019s appointment comes at a moment of deep uncertainty for Rikers. City leaders had voted to close the jail complex and open new borough-based facilities by 2027. But it\u2019s almost certain they\u2019ll miss that deadline after the previous mayoral administration slow-walked the transition.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a federal monitor released his 20th report on Rikers earlier this month, finding that \u201cpoor operational and security practices\u201d had contributed to at least a dozen in-custody deaths last year and that \u201creform effort continues to progress at a glacial pace.\u201d<\/p>\n
The decision to appoint a remediation manager in the first place stems from what Swain has described as a crisis of compliance.<\/p>\n
In recent rulings, she found the city in civil contempt for failing to carry out core safety reforms, warning that conditions at Rikers had not improved in the decade since leaders pledged sweeping change.<\/p>\n
For Swain, the appointment marks a final attempt to force change short of stripping the city of control over its jails altogether \u2014 which the judge has indicated may come next if Deml fails.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aIt’s about time,\u201d City Councilmember Tiffany Cab\u00e1n said. \u201cRikers Island has been in a humanitarian crisis for a very, very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a joint statement, Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Legal Aid Society\u2019s Prisoners\u2019 Rights Project and Debbie Greenberger, a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, applauded Swain\u2019s selection.<\/p>\n
They described Deml as \u201ca leader with fortitude, compassion and political acumen\u201d and said his \u201cdiverse background has the potential to be a tremendous strength.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others, however, cautioned that Rikers has swallowed reformers before, and that Deml\u2019s success will hinge on whether changes outlast his tenure.<\/p>\n
\u201cA receiver isn\u2019t a magic wand,\u201d said Hernandez Stroud, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, who has long argued for stripping the city of its control over Rikers. \u201cThe success of any receivership depends on the government\u2019s buy-in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stroud said Deml\u2019s independence from City Hall and his unique powers under the judge\u2019s authority could be assets \u2014 if he\u2019s willing to use them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really what separates a receiver from a political official,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re unburdened by politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, that independence can only go so far, and many interventions have failed after court oversight ended.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the receivership ends, it is entirely up to the government to proactively sustain that progress,\u201d Stroud said.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen how Deml\u2019s experience running Vermont\u2019s corrections system \u2014 which houses roughly 1,600 prisoners, including detainees awaiting trial \u2014 will prepare him for taking on a challenge as large as Rikers.<\/p>\n
Still, Zachary Katznelson, the executive director of the Independent Rikers Commission, which issued a report last year outlining how to close the jail, said running a safe system, \u201cwhere there’s real consistency of rules, of expectations, of support \u2026 those are things that are universal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advocates in Vermont offered a largely positive view of Deml\u2019s record, including his efforts to improve staffing levels and improve medical care.<\/p>\n
Matthew Valerio, Vermont\u2019s chief public defender, described Deml as \u201cone of the good guys\u201d and unusually transparent for a corrections leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking with Nick Deml was really the best experience I had with any corrections commissioner during my tenure,\u201d he said, adding that Deml was \u201cwilling to identify problem areas and work on them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Timothy Burgess, the executive director of VT CURE, a prisoner advocacy group, also praised Deml.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe can be very fair-minded when it comes to advancing the needs of people who are incarcerated,\u201d Burgess said.<\/p>\n
But, Burgess added, \u201che\u2019s also very much a company man\u201d and echoed others, including Falko Schilling, advocacy director at ACLU of Vermont, who said that not all of his reforms stuck.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were many systemic challenges and a lot of them still remain,\u201d Schilling said.<\/p>\n
Correction: This story has been updated to attribute a statement to a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Due to inaccurate information provided by the State of Vermont, this story has additionally been updated to reflect the number of detainees in Vermont’s corrections system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rikers Island’s new remediation manager, who was named on Tuesday, will have authority even beyond that of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-115599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-the-bronx","13":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","14":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}