Mamdani Orders Rikers to Draft Plan Ending Solitary; Compliance Deadline Set for February

Mayor Mamdani’s emergency order to finally tackle solitary confinement on Rikers Island portends a reckoning for New York’s ailing jail system—one that will reverberate well beyond city limits.

On an icy January evening, New Yorkers again confronted a familiar, dispiriting tally: at least 15 lives lost in Department of Correction custody last year, many on Rikers Island—an ignominious badge for America’s largest city. The arrival this month of Zohran Mamdani in City Hall coincided not with fresh hope, but with federal intervention looming: a judge poised to empower a remediation manager to govern much of the city jail system. Now, with one signature, Mayor Mamdani has issued an emergency executive order aimed squarely at a chronic, festering sore—the widespread use of solitary confinement in the city’s jails.

The order is both an admission of longstanding dysfunction and a bid to comply with city laws that have, until now, been more observed in the breach than the observance. After years in which his predecessors let the jails operate in a state of emergency—ostensibly for pandemic and staffing reasons—Mamdani has temporarily extended those conditions, but crucially compelled the Department of Correction (DOC) to devise a plan for following solitary confinement restrictions by mid-February. “The previous administration’s refusal to meet their legal obligations on Rikers has left us with troubling conditions that will take time to resolve,” the mayor conceded.

The immediate stakes are clear. In late 2023, the City Council passed a law sharply curtailing how long inmates could be isolated—overriding then-Mayor Eric Adams’ veto on grounds of safety and workability. But Adams’ own emergency order promptly neutered the law, allowing continued solitary placements that critics compare to torture. The new regime in City Hall signals, at minimum, an intent to align the city with its own standards and, perhaps, to stem what has become both a human rights debacle and an administrative punchline.

Rikers Island, with a population following a decadal decline but still swollen compared with other major city jails, has long been synonymous with brutality and neglect. The island’s two-square-mile complex lurches from crisis to crisis—waves of stabbings, staff absences so chronic that showers and medical visits are missed, facilities falling into decrepitude. The attempt to close Rikers entirely, and replace it with smaller borough-based jails, has foundered as political will waned and construction timelines slipped.

Yet the news of Mamdani’s order is not just a gesture to civil society groups, which have for years denounced the psychological toll of solitary confinement; it is an administrative gambit born of necessity. The DOC will have to produce a credible roadmap—one that balances court-mandated safety, the new legal restrictions, and the city’s perennial staffing woes. Shayla Mulzac-Warner, the department’s spokesperson, dryly promised that “safe and humane conditions remain our goal and our responsibility.” One doubts an overnight solution is imminent.

The reverberations are not limited to jails policy. Rikers has become a sinkhole for city resources, consuming over $2.7bn annually. With fewer than 6,000 detainees, New York now spends an eye-watering $500,000 per inmate per year, a figure that would make even Nordic penologists blush. Continued federal scrutiny—as a judge threatens to partially usurp local authority over the jail—bodes ill for city autonomy, finances, and reputation.

Worse, the status quo has become politically toxic. Reform of “punitive segregation,” as the solitary system is euphemistically known, commands support across a motley coalition: progressives dismayed by the deaths and squalor; fiscal conservatives aghast at cost overruns and legal settlements; and even correctional unions eager for clearer rules to govern an increasingly perilous workplace. The emergency order, cautious though it is, offers City Hall a narrow window to wrest back credibility before external authorities swoop in.

Beyond the corridors of 125 Worth Street, the city’s solitary experiment may offer lessons—or cautionary tales—for other American cities labouring under consent decrees and federal investigations. Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia: all have jail systems teetering between control and crisis, with solitary confinement as a recurring flashpoint. The United Nations has censured the use of prolonged isolation, equating it with psychological torture. In this light, even incremental progress in New York could shape reformist ambitions—and litigation—nationally.

Federal watch and fiscal reckoning

Yet Mamdani’s move is as much about books as about bars. The federal government’s threat to take over Rikers is not idle: the last such experiment in New York—oversight of the school system—was a decades-long ordeal that left no one entirely satisfied. Any sign that the city is wrangling its correctional mess, or even just following its own rules, could stave off draconian intervention and the spending controls that would most irk municipal mandarins.

There remains a risk that pushing for rapid compliance with the solitary ban—however rhetorically satisfying—will collide with entrenched realities. Correction officers, battered by escalating violence and attrition, have at times used isolation as a crude but reliable tool to keep order. Blanket prohibition, if enforced before staffing or alternative programs improve, might simply drive misconduct into other forms or prompt further staff flight. Balancing principle with pragmatism remains the unending New York trick.

Still, there is room for measured optimism, albeit of the sceptical sort. The past three mayoral terms have witnessed much fine talk about “ending mass incarceration” and “reinventing detention,” with precious little to show but rising body counts and legal embarrassments. By compelling the DOC to present an actual plan for legal compliance, Mamdani is at least acknowledging that city statutes are not so much gentle suggestions as binding dictates, even on Rikers.

Whether this order signals the beginning of the end for solitary confinement, or simply a new chapter in bureaucratic dodging, will be settled in the coming months. The feds, the courts and the public are likely to prove less patient than in eras past. New York may yet discover that ending solitary is less fraught than ending the habit of endless exception.

In its halting quest to civilise Rikers Island, the city finally faces a true test of both will and competence. Mayor Mamdani’s order is at best a prudent course correction, and at worst a pink slip to decades of grim improvisation. The rest of America—and thousands in city custody—will be watching. ■