Last week, officials from the Board of Correction, the jails oversight board, visited Rikers Island.

Dr. Bobby Cohen, a member of the Board of Correction, described the jail’s intake, “was packed with screaming people, more than 100 people, some had been there for many days.”

“The mass of people, the volume of people who were not getting their medicine, not getting to court, not being able to urinate in the bathroom, because there was no functioning bathroom in two of the places, having to urinate on the floor, not getting clothing,” he added.

What You Need To Know

• Last week, officials from the Board of Correction visited Rikers Island to find unsanitary and alarming conditions


• It comes just days after a federal judge gave the city another chance to turn things around


• The Rikers Action Plan has deadlines the city must meet in 30, 60 and 90 days

Despite that description, the city received a reprieve this week from a federal judge — who rejected the possibility of a federal receiver for Rikers Island, at least for now. The parties will be back in court in November. The judge approved the city’s Rikers action plan on Tuesday, which details how it will to attempt to turn things around.

But it comes as some officials continue to lose confidence in how things are going, while others still want to see a federal takeover.

“The city of New York isn’t capable of stabilizing the situation on Rikers,” Congressman Ritchie Torres said. “Rikers is in a state of emergency, it’s in a state of humanitarian crisis and the federal government should intervene.”

The department’s commissioner already faces deadlines to do it. Within 60 days, he must come up with a process to significantly reduce the use of medically modified duty — a designation where officers are not allowed to work directly with detainees. Within 90 days, the department has to revise its sick leave policies to try to coral hundreds of officers back to work.

Some question how he can do it.

“So essentially the plan says fix staffing, reduce violence, get locking doors, but how that is going to happen is a real issue,” Elizabeth Glazer of Vital City and the former head of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice said.

On Friday, the Department of Correction closed down one of its jail facilities on Rikers Island, known as OBCC. Some officers who worked there will be sent over to intake, where those Board of Correction officials reportedly saw chaos last week.

“It’s hard to say this because I’ve been to a lot of jails and many, many visits, but it was really frightening, EMTC,” Dr. Cohen said.