By: Mario Mancini

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has appointed former New York City Correction Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi — whose brief tenure coincided with a severe spike in violence on Rikers Island — to his transition team shaping the city’s future public-safety policies, the New York Post reported.

Schiraldi, a longtime criminal-justice reform advocate known for pushing aggressive decarceration policies, is one of 20 members selected for Mamdani’s criminal legal services transition committee. Both men have been vocal supporters of drastically reducing the city’s jail population and ultimately closing the troubled Rikers complex.

But critics say Schiraldi’s track record makes him wholly unfit for the influential role.

Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) blasted the decision, telling the NY Post that Schiraldi “failed spectacularly at Rikers, was pushed out of Maryland after yet another correctional disaster, and now Zohran Mamdani is welcoming him with open arms.” Holden warned that Mamdani’s choices suggest New Yorkers should brace for “more chaos, more excuses, and the same public-safety failures that put our city and our jail system in danger in the first place.”

Schiraldi, now 66, served as NYC correction commissioner for the final seven months of Bill de Blasio’s administration in 2021 — a period when violence against both detainees and officers at Rikers soared. At the time, the New York Post published multiple exposés documenting deteriorating conditions, including officers’ skyrocketing sick-outs, rampant attacks, and severe overcrowding.

After leaving New York, Schiraldi was appointed in 2023 by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore to run the state’s Department of Juvenile Services. But he resigned in June of this year, the NY Post reported, after juvenile crime spiked statewide and lawmakers criticized his management style as overly lenient. His tenure included the controversial appointment of Joel Caston — who served 26 years in prison for first-degree murder — to a senior role in a new youth-detention reform unit.

Schiraldi’s critics argue that the problems under his leadership are part of a long-running pattern. Back in 2008, while heading Washington, D.C.’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, he drew outrage for directing staff to bring three juvenile detainees to his private home for a holiday cookout. One of the teens escaped.

Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, told the NY Post that Schiraldi was a disastrous choice from “Day One” when he was first appointed to oversee Rikers. “He consistently advocated to protect the rights of violent inmates while ignoring the safety of our members,” Boscio said, noting that his hiring of a convicted murderer in Maryland reinforced those concerns. “New Yorkers deserve leaders who are committed to the public’s safety and the men and women who maintain it. He is not one of them.”

Neither Mamdani nor Schiraldi responded to messages seeking comment, the NY Post reported.

Schiraldi has previously defended his record, insisting that systemic racism and the nation’s “destructive fixation on imprisonment” — not leadership failures — fueled the crisis on Rikers.