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Appointee given major authority to reform Rikers is an unexpected pick
By
Ryan Kost
Published Jan 27, 2026
Modified Jan 28, 2026
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Via Wikimedia, under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license
By
Ryan Kost
Published Jan 27, 2026
Modified Jan 28, 2026
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Rikers Island's new remediation manager, who was named on Tuesday, will have authority even beyond that of the city’s correction commissioner to push forward reforms — in an appointment that marks one of the most aggressive steps yet in a decade of federal oversight of the troubled jail complex.
Former CIA agent Nicholas Deml comes into the job with praise: Prisoner advocates in Vermont, where he served as commissioner of the state's Department of Corrections from 2021 to 2025, described him as transparent and forthright.
Some New York City reformers have sounded a note of optimism for Deml, but said his name had not been widely circulating within Rikers reform circles before the announcement.
They also caution that previous efforts to reform Rikers have failed, and any pushes for rapid and extensive change by Deml will depend on buy-in from the city government.
Despite years of monitoring, a federal court has repeatedly found that violence, staff misconduct and systemic failures remain dangerously high.
A biography attached to U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain’s order appointing Deml describes him as a “national thought leader on correctional leadership.”
He comes to the role from outside New York City politics. In Vermont, he oversaw a system far smaller than New York’s jails. Before that, he worked as an operations officer at the CIA and as an aide to Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Swain has given the city and Deml 21 days to deliver a report outlining the manager’s compensation, staffing and preliminary budget.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has yet to name his corrections commissioner, but spokesman Joe Calvello said the mayor “looks forward to working closely and collaboratively with the new remediation manager to improve conditions on Rikers Island.”
Deml’s appointment comes at a moment of deep uncertainty for Rikers. City leaders had voted to close the jail complex and open new borough-based facilities by 2027. But it’s almost certain they’ll miss that deadline after the previous mayoral administration slow-walked the transition.
Meanwhile, a federal monitor released his 20th report on Rikers earlier this month, finding that “poor operational and security practices” had contributed to at least a dozen in-custody deaths last year and that “reform effort continues to progress at a glacial pace.”
The decision to appoint a remediation manager in the first place stems from what Swain has described as a crisis of compliance.
In recent rulings, she found the city in civil contempt for failing to carry out core safety reforms, warning that conditions at Rikers had not improved in the decade since leaders pledged sweeping change.
For Swain, the appointment marks a final attempt to force change short of stripping the city of control over its jails altogether — which the judge has indicated may come next if Deml fails.
“ It's about time,” City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán said. “Rikers Island has been in a humanitarian crisis for a very, very long time.”
In a joint statement, Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project and Debbie Greenberger, a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, applauded Swain’s selection.
They described Deml as “a leader with fortitude, compassion and political acumen” and said his “diverse background has the potential to be a tremendous strength.”
Others, however, cautioned that Rikers has swallowed reformers before, and that Deml’s success will hinge on whether changes outlast his tenure.
“A receiver isn’t a magic wand,” said Hernandez Stroud, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, who has long argued for stripping the city of its control over Rikers. “The success of any receivership depends on the government’s buy-in.”
Stroud said Deml’s independence from City Hall and his unique powers under the judge’s authority could be assets — if he’s willing to use them.
“That’s really what separates a receiver from a political official,” he said. “They’re unburdened by politics.”
Still, that independence can only go so far, and many interventions have failed after court oversight ended.
“After the receivership ends, it is entirely up to the government to proactively sustain that progress,” Stroud said.
It remains to be seen how Deml’s experience running Vermont’s corrections system — which houses roughly 1,600 prisoners, including detainees awaiting trial — will prepare him for taking on a challenge as large as Rikers.
Still, Zachary Katznelson, the executive director of the Independent Rikers Commission, which issued a report last year outlining how to close the jail, said running a safe system, “where there's real consistency of rules, of expectations, of support … those are things that are universal.”
Advocates in Vermont offered a largely positive view of Deml’s record, including his efforts to improve staffing levels and improve medical care.
Matthew Valerio, Vermont’s chief public defender, described Deml as “one of the good guys” and unusually transparent for a corrections leader.
“Working with Nick Deml was really the best experience I had with any corrections commissioner during my tenure,” he said, adding that Deml was “willing to identify problem areas and work on them.”
Timothy Burgess, the executive director of VT CURE, a prisoner advocacy group, also praised Deml.
“He can be very fair-minded when it comes to advancing the needs of people who are incarcerated,” Burgess said.
But, Burgess added, “he’s also very much a company man” and echoed others, including Falko Schilling, advocacy director at ACLU of Vermont, who said that not all of his reforms stuck.
“There were many systemic challenges and a lot of them still remain,” Schilling said.
Correction: This story has been updated to attribute a statement to a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Due to inaccurate information provided by the State of Vermont, this story has additionally been updated to reflect the number of detainees in Vermont's corrections system.
Tagged
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public safety
Ryan Kost
Ryan Kost is a reporter on the day-of news desk, where he covers breaking news and writes enterprise stories about jails, courts, prosecutors and government accountability. His work focuses on the public institutions that shape life in New York. Before joining the newsroom, he lead a multi-part investigation with Columbia Journalism Investigations and New York Focus into how New York prosecutors handle wrongful conviction claims. He's also been a staff writer at The San Francisco Chronicle, The Associated Press and The Oregonian. Got a tip? Signal: ryankost.20
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