5 things to know about the 2nd in command of NYC jails

Jails executive Charles Daniels has been appointed to the No. 2 job in the city jails department — again.

Daniels was forced to resign from the senior deputy commissioner post six years ago. He then successfully sued the city with two other Black plaintiffs and won a $275,000 settlement after alleging racial discrimination.

Now he’s rejoined the beleaguered department in the same role, rounding out a controversial and colorful career.

Daniels’ appointment comes as the city’s jail system faces the potential of a federal takeover following allegations by a federal monitor escalating violence and correction officers hiding information about detainee deaths. He replaces Joseph Dempsey, who abruptly resigned in February amid sexual harassment allegations after just three months on the job.

Daniels has had an eventful six years since his last departure from the city's correction department. He first went to the troubled Alabama Corrections Department, where he served as deputy commissioner for four months. Then he led the Nevada Corrections Department starting in 2019, where staffers called his behavior “erratic.” Then-Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak asked Daniels to resign in September after a prisoner who was serving a life sentence for murder escaped, and the department did not report it for several days.

The department declined an interview with Daniels for this article. A spokesperson referred Gothamist to the press release announcing his appointment last week.

Here are five things that New Yorkers need to know about the new No. 2 official running the city's jails.

1) Daniels sued the New York City Department of Correction in 2017.

Daniels was one of three top correction officials to sue the department for racial discrimination in 2017.

After serving just three months as senior deputy commissioner in 2017, Daniels said in court papers that he was forced out by then-Commissioner Joseph Ponte after refusing to cover up increasing violence at Rikers during a meeting with the mayor’s office.

Ponte first barred Daniels from attending City Hall meetings, then asked him to resign, he alleged in court documents.

In a joint lawsuit with two other Black top officials — former Deputy Commissioner of Operations Errol Toulon and ex-Assistant Commissioner Keith Taylor — Daniels said white department leaders were “colluding” to remove him from the job. The lawsuit also said a top correction official told correction officers not to cooperate with him.

The trio won a $275,000 settlement from the department. The city did not admit wrongdoing.

2) In his last job, he shut down a Nevada prison without telling lawmakers or the governor.

As director of the Nevada Corrections Department, Daniels abruptly shut down a rural prison without consulting or informing state officials, according to a Nevada state legislative meeting that was taped and then reviewed by Gothamist.

Daniels closed the Ely Conservation Camp one day after a stabbing at the prison in July 2020, moving prisoners and staff to other facilities. “We could not man that facility safely,” Daniels testified months later at a legislative hearing.

Daniels did not inform state finance officials about the prison’s closure for four months, according to testimony at a public hearing, alarming lawmakers about how state funds for that prison were being used.

“That information should have come from your office back in July. We’re sitting here in October,” Nevada state Assemblymember Daniele Monroe-Moreno said at the hearing.

Daniels insisted the prison’s closure was temporary, but it remains closed three years later.

3) His leadership style has drawn mixed reviews.

An Alabama corrections officers advocate said Daniels worked hard to clean up a corrupt department in that state, which made him unpopular. Alabama Corrections is as “corrupt as a $3 bill,” said Randy McGilberry, president of the Alabama Corrections Officers Association.

Daniels led several contraband raids in Alabama prisons, seizing over 500 weapons, more than 600 grams of hard drugs, nearly 650 assorted pills and 64 cellphones, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.

“The people that liked him were very few and far between,” McGilberry said. “You know what happens when you shake the cage. And he shook it to the toenails.”

“If Charles Daniels were still running the show, I think a lot of the corrupt people would be gone,” McGilberry said.

The lawyer who represented Daniels in his suit against New York City agreed.

“I consider him to be a jewel to the department,” said Rocco Avallone, calling it a “smart move” to bring him back.

“If it can be fixed, he definitely is the person who can fix what's going on at Rikers Island, along with, obviously, Commissioner Molina," he said.

But corrections staff in Nevada were less complimentary. In a letter staffers sent to the governor questioning Daniels’ “mental health and fitness, they called him “erratic, hostile and abusive” in the wake of two prisoner suicides that took place just hours apart at a Nevada prison. Daniels did not respond to allegations at the time.

Prison medical staff said in the letter that Daniels was “completely unhinged” during two separate emergency meetings about the suicides where he “screamed in a blind rage” and pounded his fist on the podium. Daniels arrived at least an hour late to the meetings, according to the letter, and demanded that staffers watch a 1980s documentary about mental health in prisons.

Sarah Paryga, former senior psychiatrist for the Nevada Corrections Department, reported Daniels’ behavior to an internal investigator. She was fired four days later.

“I've never been treated that way ever,” said Paryga, adding she felt staff operated within a “culture of fear.”

4) Daniels was forced out of his job in Nevada after a convicted murderer escaped and was on the run for days.

Sisolak, the former Nevada governor, asked Daniels to resign last September after a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder escaped, and the department did not report it for several days.

Porfirio Duarte-Herrera was incarcerated for detonating a bomb in a coffee cup that killed a hotdog vendor. He escaped from the Southern Desert Correctional Center on a Friday using a dummy in his bed, but the department didn’t realize until a headcount the following Tuesday, the department told reporters.

Duarte-Herrera likely used battery acid to break down the window frame of his cell, and then either hopped over a perimeter fence or went through it, according to reports.

He was caught the next day after being spotted by a shuttle bus company employee who contacted police.

Sisolak said the fact his office only found out about the escape on Tuesday was “unacceptable.”

“This cannot happen again,” he said, asking for Daniels’ resignation.

Daniels hit back, alleging he was asked to resign after refusing to lie about the timeline of the escape and sent a letter to the Nevada governor soon after demanding a $1 million severance check, which he did not receive.

5) Nevada had one of the highest COVID-19 prison death rates in the country while he was in charge, data shows.

In March 2021, the Nevada prison system had the third highest death rate of incarcerated people across 45 states, according to data from the COVID Prison Project.

Advocate Jodi Hocking, founder of the Nevada prisoner advocate group Return Strong, said the Daniels administration lied about prison conditions while running a secretive department she described as a “silent shroud.”

A Return Strong report detailed the 10 most urgent issues that lead to "inhumane" conditions for prisoners during the pandemic. These included extensive lockdown periods, when prisoners received slow medical assistance, a lack of masks and PPE, chronic staff shortages, frequent moving of prisoners, limited cleaning and "a chronic and sustained lack of medical help."

Hocking said some prisoners were sometimes taken to hospital with COVID without their families being notified.

In addition to criticizing the Nevada prison COVID protocols, advocates, including Hocking, said Daniels was in charge when prisoners suddenly lost 80% of the money in their bank accounts. She said prisoners had limited access to medical care, faced up to 66% markups on the prices of commissary items and had so little food that some resorted to eating toilet paper. Prisoners staged multiple hunger strikes over conditions in the prisons during Daniels’ administration.

“If he's in leadership, it's his responsibility to figure out, like, why is there not enough food?” Hocking said.

While criticizing Daniels’s leadership, Hocking credits him with mobilizing a new group of prisoner advocates who became “unwilling to sit still and not fight back anymore.” Nevada has since enacted significant prison reform under the new administration, she said.

“It seems like a very questionable decision on New York's part,” Hocking said of Daniels’ appointment. “All of us that know how bad it was are like, ‘How would he ever get a job in corrections again?’”

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Career Timeline

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1984 - 1988: U.S. Air Force

1988 - 2016: Federal Bureau of Prisons, worked his way up from correction officer to complex warden across multiple states.

Jan. - April 2017: New York City Department of Correction Senior Deputy Commissioner

Jan. - Dec. 2019: Alabama Department of Corrections Deputy Commissioner of Operations

Dec. 2019 - Sept. 2022: Nevada Department of Corrections Director

Sept. 2022 - Sept. 2023: Unknown

Sept. 2023 - current: New York City Department of Correction Senior Deputy Commissioner