Federal Judge Names Nicholas Deml to Take Control of Rikers Island Operations

Deml’s background, including service as commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections, where he led workforce stabilization efforts, sought improvements in health care for people in custody and pursued culture change across the state’s prisons.

What You Need to Know

• U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain appointed Nicholas Deml, a former C.I.A. officer and former Commission of the Vermont Department of Corrections, as remediation manager for New York City’s jail system, including Rikers Island.

• Deml will replace the mayor as the primary decision-maker for major jail operations, working alongside the city correction commissioner while reporting directly to the judge.

• Swain directed Deml and the city to meet quickly and submit a confidential logistics report within 21 days outlining how the role will function.

• The appointment follows years of federal oversight and continuing concerns about violence, staffing and medical care, as the city also faces deadlines and rising costs tied to plans to close Rikers.

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NEW YORK — A federal judge overseeing New York City’s jails appointed Nicholas Deml, a former C.I.A. officer and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Correction, to assume control over major decisions at the Rikers Island jail complex, shifting authority away from City Hall as the court pushes for faster reforms.

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain said Deml and the city should meet promptly to work through logistics, then confidentially submit an agreed-upon plan within 21 days.

Swain’s order names Deml as the court’s remediation manager, a role created after the judge concluded in May that the city had not made sufficient progress addressing longstanding safety and operational failures. Under the structure Swain described, Deml will work with the New York City correction commissioner but will be “empowered to take all actions necessary” to improve conditions, according to an article from The New York Times.

An appendix to the order describes Deml’s background, including service as commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections, where he led workforce stabilization efforts, sought improvements in health care for people in custody and pursued culture change across the state’s prisons. The appendix also notes he previously served as an aide to Sen. Richard J. Durbin on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The appointment sets up an early test for Mayor Zohran Mamdani as the city navigates federal oversight while also moving toward an ambitious construction and closure timeline. Mamdani has not named a replacement for Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, who led the Department of Correction under former Mayor Eric Adams, as the city works toward building four new facilities by next year.

In his first full week in office, Mamdani extended a longstanding state of emergency that has suspended some rules governing conditions in city jails. “The previous administration’s refusal to meet their legal obligations on Rikers has left us with troubling conditions that will take time to resolve,” Mamdani said, according to an article from The New York Times. His executive order also directed the city to develop a plan within 45 days to comply with those rules.

Federal oversight of Rikers dates to a 2015 agreement that settled a class-action lawsuit focused on reducing use of force and violence affecting both people in custody and correction officers. Court-appointed monitor Steve J. Martin issued his 20th report on Jan. 13. In that report, Martin’s team wrote that “the reform effort continues to progress at a glacial pace,” according to an article from The New York Times.

City data cited in the report show that since 2022, at least 48 people have died either while held in New York City jails or shortly after being released. The city recorded 15 deaths in 2025, up from five in 2024.

Calls for an outside takeover have circulated for years among advocates for incarcerated people, defense lawyers and city leaders. Swain noted that federal takeovers of jail systems are uncommon; when she issued her May order, only nine had occurred nationwide since the late 1970s, according to the federal monitor.

Separately, the city remains legally obligated under a 2019 City Council law to close Rikers by August 2027 and replace it with four smaller borough-based jails, though the timeline is widely viewed as unrealistic. A commission created to guide the closure effort urged the city last year to appoint two senior officials focused solely on shuttering the complex.

The jail population has also climbed back toward pre-pandemic levels. When the 2019 closure law passed, the population was about 7,000, then dipped below 4,000 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today it is again nearly 7,000, the report said.

Costs for the four new jails have increased to an estimated $15.5 billion from $8.7 billion. The city’s comptroller has recently said New York faces a budget deficit of about $12.6 billion.

Deml continues to serve as a member of the Correctional News Editorial Advisory Board.

This article is based on reporting originally published by The New York Times on Jan. 27, 2026.