A growing chorus: With Rikers hearing nearing, more voices support receiver

Add good government group Citizens Union to the growing list of those inside and outside of government — including plaintiffs Legal Aid Society, the Manhattan U.S. attorney, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and this very Editorial Board — calling on Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain to take the step of putting the NYC Department of Correction under federal receivership.

In a letter sent last week, the longtime watchdog emphasized its history of steadfast support for city home rule, a commitment tempered in this case only by the significance of the challenges at Rikers Island and the direct threat to human life and health that they represent.

They are certainly not alone in navigating this uneasy contradiction; this column has expressed fiery support for the city’s right to determine its own speed limits, zoning rules, public school system structure and various other crucial elements of municipal life. Yet we long ago came to the conclusion that the problem of Rikers was simply too massive, too complex for a city administration too vested in the politics of it to handle, particularly absent what seems like a real commitment to face down the corrections union.

The reluctance to seriously entertain the idea of a receiver, much less acknowledge that it could have some merit, is to some extent understandable. To hand over the reins of what was supposed to be your responsibility feels like a failure, and there’s no doubt that the city has, in all ways that matter, failed enormously on Rikers. In that light, having a receiver come in must seem like a capitulation, an acceptance that your critics were right and you were wrong and you simply couldn’t make things work.

Yet the Adams administration must remember that it was dealt a bad hand here, asked to right a ship that had been listing dangerously for decades and where some issues, like a collapsing physical infrastructure, were on a path to deterioration that was difficult to even mitigate, let alone counteract. That Mayor Adams and Correction Commissioner Louis Molina were not able to reverse decades of problems in a few months isn’t their fault. It was an impossible mission, faced with intractable obstacles like an ingrained corrections culture that disfavors accountability and proper management.

At some point, good leadership means setting aside your pride and whatever mandate it is you think you have and thinking about your responsibility to the public, including criminal detainees, who remain at the same grievous risk of persistent violence, lack of proper healthcare and crumbling buildings with poor fire safety that they have for years. It’s a risk that Federal Monitor Steve Martin, who has seen up close the functioning of corrections departments around the country from every angle, continuously points out is neither standard nor acceptable, and we as the public certainly shouldn’t give it a pass. Neither should Swain.

This Thursday at 2 p.m., Swain will hold another extraordinary hearing to examine the situation and U.S. Attorney Damian Williams’ recent support for receivership. The hearing will be accessible to everyone in the public via phone (as should all court proceedings), and it should by all rights be beamed into Rikers itself, where the detainees might hear that true help is finally on the way.