Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain on January 27, 2026 named Nicholas Deml, the former head of Vermont’s prison system, as the court-appointed “remediation manager” who will take control of Rikers Island and the broader New York City Department of Correction — stripping operational authority from City Hall after years of failed reform.

A manager who answers to the court, not the mayor

Deml will hold the title of “Nunez remediation manager,” a role created out of the long-running federal civil-rights case Nunez v. City of New York. Under Swain’s framework, he makes decisions independently of the mayor and reports to the federal court. The judge granted the position sweeping authority over the day-to-day running of the jails: the power to hire, train, promote, demote, transfer, investigate, evaluate, and fire Department of Correction personnel.

That means Deml — not Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office on January 1, 2026 — now holds practical control over conditions at Rikers. Swain said she planned to formally appoint Deml in the weeks after the announcement, once he and the city negotiated a budget for his new office.

Who Deml is

Deml, 38, ran the Vermont Department of Corrections for four years before being tapped for the New York role. He is a former CIA officer and earlier worked as an aide to Illinois Senator Dick Durbin on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Corrections officials who worked alongside him have described his approach as strategic, deliberate, and focused on sustainability — a contrast to the crisis-driven churn that has marked Rikers leadership under successive mayors.

How Rikers got here

The receivership-style takeover is the culmination of the Nunez litigation, a class action brought by detainees and joined by federal prosecutors over chronic violence, excessive use of force, and unsafe conditions in the jails. A 2015 consent judgment laid out a sweeping set of reforms. The city repeatedly fell short, and Swain found it in contempt of multiple provisions.

In May 2025, Swain ordered the creation of the remediation manager position, ruling that the city had failed for years to comply with the consent judgment and that an outside authority answering to the court was the only realistic path to compliance. Her order required the city to fund the manager’s office until it comes into compliance with the agreement’s provisions. The January 2026 naming of Deml put a person in the seat the order had created.

The cost and the timeline

The remediation manager’s office is not cheap. The city projected the office would cost roughly $10 million in its first full year, and the oversight is expected to last at least seven years — and potentially longer — before the city can demonstrate enough sustained compliance to win back control. Estimates of the total taxpayer cost over the life of the arrangement have run well into the tens of millions of dollars.

The takeover also collides with a separate legal mandate: a city law requires Rikers to close and be replaced by smaller borough-based jails, a plan that has slipped years behind schedule and lacks a firm completion date. Deml inherits both the immediate task of reducing violence and the longer-term backdrop of a jail the city is legally bound to shut down.

Why it matters

The appointment marks one of the most significant transfers of control over a major city agency to a court-appointed outsider in recent New York history. For the Mamdani administration, it removes one of the city’s most intractable problems from direct mayoral control even as the city continues to pay for it. For detainees and their advocates, it is the first time in a decade of litigation that an authority with the power to act sits outside the political pressures that they argue stalled reform.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who is in charge of Rikers Island now?
Nicholas Deml, named by federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain on January 27, 2026 as the 'Nunez remediation manager.' He runs the jails independently of the mayor and answers to the court.
What is the Nunez case?
Nunez v. City of New York is a class-action civil-rights suit, joined by federal prosecutors, over chronic violence and use of force in city jails. A 2015 consent judgment set reforms the city repeatedly failed to meet, leading the judge to strip control from the city.
Does Mayor Mamdani control Rikers?
No. The remediation manager makes operational decisions independently of the mayor. Deml can hire, fire, promote, demote, investigate and discipline Department of Correction staff.
How much will the receivership cost and how long will it last?
The remediation manager's office was projected to cost the city roughly $10 million a year, and the oversight is expected to last at least seven years before the city can regain control.