Ex-CIA Officer to Take Control of NYC Jails
The Rikers Island jail complex in the Bronx borough of New York, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)
New York City’s long-struggling Rikers Island jail is getting a new leader—one who will answer directly to a federal judge rather than City Hall. On Tuesday, US District Judge Laura Taylor Swain appointed Nicholas Deml, a former CIA officer and former head of Vermont’s corrections system, to take operational control of the jail complex, the New York Times reports. The judge ordered Deml and the city to submit a confidential management plan within 21 days.
Deml, 38, will serve as a “remediation manager” with the authority to “take all actions necessary” to reform Rikers while working alongside the city’s correction commissioner. According to the Queens Daily Eagle, he will be able to hire, train, promote, demote, transfer, investigate, evaluate, and fire any staff member in the Department of Correction—except for the commissioner, whose responsibilities Deml will largely assume.
The move comes after years of federal oversight and damning reports about violence and mismanagement at Rikers. A court-appointed monitor recently said reforms at the jail have progressed at a “glacial pace.” Since 2022, at least 48 people have died in city custody or shortly after release, according to city data. Attorneys for detainees called Deml’s appointment “a historic step” toward addressing what they describe as ongoing constitutional violations. The correction officers’ union expressed hope that Deml’s previous corrections experience will make him sensitive to staff safety concerns.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has faced rising scrutiny over Rikers, said he looks forward to collaborating with Deml. Mamdani has extended a longstanding jail “state of emergency” and ordered a plan to comply with suspended rules within 45 days. The mayor also faces a looming legal deadline: a 2019 law requires the city to close Rikers by August 2027 and replace it with four smaller borough-based jails—a timeline now seen as uncertain as costs have soared to an estimated $15.5 billion and the jail population has risen to roughly 7,000. For context, that’s more than four times the prison population of Vermont, where Deml led the Department of Corrections from 2021 until last August, the Daily Eagle notes.
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