Mayor Zohran Mamdani is turning to an ex-con to run NYC’s embattled jail system.
Stanley Richards was named Saturday as the new commissioner of the Department of Correction — the first ever ex-jailbird to lead a city agency, the socialist mayor announced Saturday.
Richards, who served jail time in the late 1980s for robbery, previously worked as president of the nonprofit Fortune Society that provides housing and other services for ex-cons. He’s also the DOC’s former deputy commissioner of programs and operations.
Mamdani announced Richards’ appointment less than a week after a federal judge tapped Nicholas Deml, the ex-head honcho of Vermont’s prison system, as an “remediation manager” who’ll run Rikers Island’s scandal-scarred jail complex independent of City Hall.