A federal monitor overseeing New York City’s violent and dangerous jails asked a judge on Monday to consider holding the Department of Correction and its commissioner in contempt for disobeying court orders, opening the possibility that officials could be punished for failing to improve conditions.
The monitor, Steve J. Martin, wrote in a report filed in Manhattan federal court that the “pace of reform has stagnated,” and that there has “been a disturbing level of regression” in several areas, including investigations into staff misconduct after episodes of excessive force.
Conditions on Rikers Island have only worsened since the Correction Department developed an improvement plan a year ago, Mr. Martin wrote. Doors are still not properly secured, correction officers continue to abandon posts and detainees often gather in high-security areas, he said. During routine searches, officers miss weapons, which have later been used in violent episodes, Mr. Martin said.
Four people have died at Rikers this year. Last year, 19 people died in city jails or at hospitals soon after release — the deadliest year in nearly a decade.
For the first time, Mr. Martin urged the federal judge, Laura T. Swain, to begin proceedings to decide whether to hold the city, the Correction Department and Commissioner Louis A. Molina in contempt of court. At a hearing next month, Judge Swain could decide whether to start contempt proceedings.
Contempt is “a potent weapon meant to coerce a party into future compliance with a court order,” Mr. Martin wrote, one that he has not recommended since appointed to oversee the jails in 2015. He said he “does not make such a recommendation to the court lightly and, in fact is doing so only after it has exhausted other available strategies.”
Kayla Mamelak, a City Hall spokeswoman, said in a statement that the city remains “committed to continued reform and working with the monitor.”
“We are prepared to fully defend against any contempt motion, and the record will reflect the important and necessary steps New York City has taken to make continued progress,” she added.
The filing on Monday is one of around 40 reports and letters that Mr. Martin has sent to the court since 2015, when the city entered a landmark settlement that mandated regular updates on conditions in the jails. The settlement was the outcome of a class-action lawsuit brought by the Legal Aid Society and private law firms that sought to stamp out an endemic culture of violence.
Mr. Molina has faced mounting pressure to reduce violence or risk the appointment of a receiver — an outsider appointed to take over management of the jails.
The report “makes clear that all efforts to date to change the New York City Department of Correction’s pattern of brutality have failed,” Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society, said in a statement Monday.
“Continuing down the same path — promises of change, monitor’s reports that lead nowhere, court orders that get ignored — will merely cause more injuries and death,” she added. “The need for an independent authority over the jails is clearer than ever.”
Holding officials and agencies in contempt is a stern punishment, but would let New York City retain control of Rikers, which officials plan to close in favor of smaller jails around the city.
Stripping a city, county or state of control over jails or prisons is rare and complex. A federal judge last year said the court would appoint a receiver to oversee the Raymond Detention Center in Hinds County, Miss., following years of mismanagement. In 2005, California was forced to relinquish authority over its prison health care system following a lawsuit detailing abuses.
Mr. Martin’s recommendation could nudge the Correction Department in a positive direction, said Hernandez D. Stroud, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
“If there’s that threat that contempt could occur, that too could be an effective motivator,” he said. A defense of “good faith” would not hold off such a ruling, Mr. Stroud said. “They can still be held in contempt even if they say they gave it their best shot,” he said.
He noted that courts have broad discretion in what punishments accompany a finding of contempt, but fines could be levied against the city.
In Mr. Molina’s first 10 months, Mr. Martin appeared to support him: In October, he told Judge Swain that the commissioner had “courage to make unpopular changes and creativity in his approach to solving decades-old problems.”
But Mr. Molina took steps to limit the public release of damaging information about the jails. He revoked an oversight panel’s unrestricted access to security footage and reversed a policy that required the agency to notify the public about deaths inside the facilities.
“Individuals want to curate their own fact pattern to reach the conclusion that they would like the public to have,” Mr. Molina said in an interview in June.
The next day, Mr. Martin released a report that accused Mr. Molina and Correction Department leadership of concealing information about violence that endangered staff and detainees.