The federal government — which couldn’t manage to keep Jerffery Epstein alive at its Metropolitan Correctional Center long enough for him to be tried in court — is poised to take over New York’s Rikers Island, a criminal justice watchdog group tells The New York Sun.

The president of the Citizens Crime Commission, Richard Aborn, says a federal takeover is the likely and “overdue” outcome of proceedings today in federal court. The city has long been divided on the issue of closing the facility at Rikers and opening smaller community jails.

A federal takeover would be the most drastic of many efforts to address the chronic failures of the Rikers jails, where 16 people died in 2021 and three have died this year.

The idea of closing the facilities at the island is broadly popular, with recent polling indicating around 60 percent of city voters support the plan. The City Council in 2019 passed an $8 billion plan to close the facility and open facilities in the five boroughs of New York City. That idea has also drawn widespread criticism.

Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the Southern District of New York last week ordered the city’s Department of Correction commissioner, Louis Molina, to attend today’s status update session, following a letter from a U.S. attorney, Damian Williams.

“The jails are in a state of crisis, inmates and staff are being seriously injured, and action is desperately needed now,” the letter read. Mr. Williams questioned “the ability, expertise, and will to swiftly make the changes necessary to bring true reform.”

Judge Swain noted the “the gravity and urgency of the security situation,” and “the consequent need for clarity as to planned changes and the implementation.”

Mr. Richard Aborn said a federal receiver was necessary to rein in operations at Rikers Island.

“In terms of a federal receiver being appointed for Rikers, I think it is an idea that is way overdue,” Mr. Aborn told  the Sun. “The conditions at Rikers are beyond terrible and the city shows no ability to remedy the situation.”

He said Mayor Adams “has inherited such a complicated situation that only a federal takeover will give any hope of ending the violence.”

Mr. Aborn was skeptical that Mr. Adams has “sufficient powers” to fix the situation at Rikers Island: “Is there any real, plausible pathway forward for any mayor to be able to fix this? To me the clear answer is no.”

Mr. Adams has previously said he is confident in his administration’s ability to fix the facilities on the island but will work with any court decision.

“Fixing Rikers is critically important, a moral imperative, and we need to get it right,” he said. “These are generational challenges, deeply ingrained, and no administration can solve them in less than four months.”

The “generational challenges” Mr. Adams is referring to are largely centered around negligence at the facility that is often attributed to absenteeism among the staff.

A report filed in March by federal monitor Steven Martin says that violent conflagrations at Rikers “have become normalized and have seemingly lost their power to instill a sense of urgency among those with the power to make change.”

The receiver would be appointed as part of a years-long federal case concerning Rikers Island that was initially filed as a class action by inmates alleging cruel and unusual punishment and a “deep-seated culture of violence” at the jail.

Representatives of the New York City Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association did not respond to a request for comment.

While most people agree that the current conditions at Rikers Island are unacceptable, opinions on what ultimately to do with the facility vary drastically.

The current plan, which enjoys the support of Mr. Adams,  is to close Rikers Island and open four borough-based jails in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.

A former prosecutor at the Queens District Attorney’s office, Jim Quinn, doubts that these smaller jails will have enough beds to service the city.

“It’s all ideologically driven, it’s not logical,” Mr. Quinn told the Sun. “To think that at any time in our future we’re only going to need 3,300 jail beds is ridiculous.”

He is referencing the plan to further reduce the population in city jails to just over 3,000. Rikers Island currently holds about 5,500 people, down from nearly 10,000 in 2017 and more than 20,000 in the 1990s.

Mr. Quinn blames the push to close Rikers Island on the city’s continuing failure to fix the facility, arguing that the city should have reinvested in the island years ago.

“You can build jails, brand new spanking modern jails on Rikers Island now, and if the city had started that in 2017 those jails would be built by now,” he said.

Others, like Mr. Aborn, are committed to the cause of closing the facilities on Rikers Island.

He reiterated his belief that a federally appointed receiver will “succeed and none of this should in any way interfere with the plan to close Rikers.” 

“In fact it should be just the opposite,” he added. “It should be added incentive to close it even faster.”

Epstein, who was awaiting trial in federal court on sex trafficking charges, was found dead in his cell at the federal jail in lower Manhattan in August 2019. Two federal Bureau of Prisons employees were found to have failed to properly monitor Epstein while he was incarcerated. The death was determined to be a suicide.