After reviewing strongly-worded reports from the independent monitor in a case involving New York City’s jails, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the Southern District of New York on Thursday ordered the commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction to attend an upcoming status conference in the case, citing the “gravity and urgency of the security situation” in the facilities.

Swain’s order came two days after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, an intervening plaintiff in the case, asked her to require the commissioner’s attendance at the April 26 status conference in a letter that also threatened that the office may seek the appointment of a receiver to run the jails.