A CASUAL reader of the news these days might conclude that there is real hope
for Rikers Island, New York’s cesspool of a jail complex, located swimming
distance from La Guardia Airport in the East River.
This month, the city announced an ambitious supervised release program that will
offer some defendants alternatives to jail, and earlier this year, the city
agreed to end the use of punitive solitary confinement for inmates 21 and
younger. The state’s top judge wants to reduce the time defendants await their
day in court. The United States attorney for the Southern District of New York,
Preet Bharara, and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration have agreed to a series
of reforms, including the appointment of a federal monitor and better
record-keeping and restrictions on use of force by guards. And the New York City
Council is working on a bill to create a bail fund for certain low-level
defendants.
Still, one would search in vain for an informed person who believes any of these
laudable measures will fundamentally alter life at Rikers. Indeed, recent
reports suggest that violence has continued apace on the island even after the
surge of press scrutiny and the push for reform. Dramatic change is hard to come
by in an institution such as Rikers, with its entrenched unions and government
bureaucracies, a hidebound court system and an antiquated physical plant.
If our courts were speedier, our bail system not so rigged against the poor and
our mental health and drug rehabilitation programs properly funded, Rikers and
other jails might be manageable. Instead, Rikers and big city jails around the
country have become notorious dumping grounds for the impoverished, the addicted
and the mentally ill.
The reality is that the only way to transform Rikers is to destroy it; it needs
to be permanently closed. The buildings are crumbling. The guard culture of
prisoner abuse and the gang culture of violence are ingrained. The complex is
New York’s Guantánamo Bay: a secluded island, beyond the gaze of watchdogs,
where the Constitution is no guide. It is a place that has outlived its
usefulness.
Shuttering Rikers would be an audacious move for Mr. de Blasio, who would have
to find alternatives for the island’s roughly 10,000 overwhelmingly male,
African-American and Latino inmates. This may not be as hard as it might seem,
though it would probably involve some new or expanded detention facilities in
the boroughs, risking not-in-my-backyard blowback.
The mayor would also need to confront a cozy judicial culture that tolerates
delays by judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys. He would need the backing
of the city’s five district attorneys, the City Council, the state Office of
Court Administration and the correction officers union. Most challenging,
perhaps, he would need the cooperation, if not the outright support, of his bête
noire, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
No doubt he would be branded a softy by the tough-on-crime crowd. But the mayor
might be pleasantly surprised by the public support for the idea. Over the past
year, a wave of revulsion has swept over the city, as horror story after horror
story of beatings, suicides and an inmate who was allowed to bake to death have
incited genuine public outrage. In conversations with people close to City Hall,
former city officials and veteran criminal justice professionals, I have sensed
a growing willingness to explore the “close Rikers” option, and many in the
criminal justice community are beginning to think the unthinkable. It would
require meaningful research and planning, but I think the mayor would find many
allies.
“Given Mayor de Blasio’s commitment to reform the city’s jail system, it is
important to also consider the ultimate reform, closing the largest penal colony
in the United States and moving pretrial detainees closer to the courts and to
their families,” said Michael P. Jacobson, executive director of the CUNY
Institute for State and Local Governance, and a correction commissioner under
former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Closing Rikers would reverberate far beyond New York. Criminal justice reform is
having a “national moment.” For the first time in half a century there appears
to be bipartisan support for changes in police practices, drug
decriminalization, sentencing and the use of solitary confinement. The closing
of the country’s most notorious jail would serve as a powerful message that
institutions can be held accountable, that government can take new approaches to
old problems, and that real change is achievable.
It would also set an example for other cities whose jails have become hotbeds of
violence or default mental institutions. It would elevate us in the eyes of the
developed world, where our astounding rate of incarceration, our preference for
punishment over rehabilitation and our affection for the death penalty make us
an outlier.
Finally, rebuilding the 400-acre island would unleash one of the most exciting
redevelopment opportunities of a generation. The island could accommodate
thousands of housing units, boosting Mayor de Blasio’s affordable housing
initiative. It could become a park, or a university campus. Some believe it can
be part of a much-needed plan to build another runway at La Guardia.
The logistics of closing Rikers would be challenging, but they are not
insurmountable. Shortening average stays would go a long way toward reducing the
population. The mayor’s plan to expand supervised release programs would be a
substantial achievement. The city has also agreed to find a place to move 16-
and 17-year-old prisoners. More than half of the Rikers population is there
because they cannot make bail. Eliminating money bail, or at least greatly
modifying it, could lead to the release of another large portion of the jail
population. Likewise, shifting drug- or alcohol-addicted prisoners to
alternative programs such as drug or alcohol rehab, and relocating the seriously
mentally ill, could reduce it further. Expanding capacity in borough detention
facilities could absorb some of the remaining slots. Finally, the roughly 15
percent of Rikers residents who are sentenced prisoners could be moved to state
prisons. This is an admittedly crude analysis, and there will still be a need to
build some new facilities in the boroughs, but it demonstrates that the goal is
within shooting distance.
The city has several funding options to pay for the transition. It could
probably raise hundreds of millions of dollars selling the island to private
developers or the Port Authority, which operates La Guardia. The Manhattan
district attorney’s office and the City of New York recently received several
hundred million dollars each from Wall Street asset forfeiture settlements. What
better use of these funds than to contribute to the closing of the city’s most
infamous jail complex?
Ultimately, closing Rikers will be a matter of the city’s collective political
will and conscience. Interestingly, the city has risen to a comparable challenge
in the past. In the 1980s, there was an internationally disreputable
neighborhood where crime, drugs and prostitution were rampant, which sprawled
over many crowded blocks, and which had successfully repelled years of cleanup
efforts. Finally, a mayor and governor who openly detested each other joined
forces to clean up the place once and for all. They fought lawsuits, condemned
land, assembled properties and successfully transformed the neighborhood. That
place was Times Square; the mayor’s name was Edward I. Koch and the governor was
Mario M. Cuomo, the father of the current officeholder. Rikers is inarguably a
bigger blot on New York than Times Square ever was, and most everyone will
celebrate its demise.
Brutality is a decades-old problem in Rikers Island jail complex in New York
City. Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, was on the mark
last year when he said that ending it would require new policies that would be
monitored and enforced by a federal court instead of being allowed to fade when
public attention inevitably waned after the latest lawsuit or headline. Mr.
Bharara delivered on that promise on Monday, when the city agreed to sweeping
policy changes to settle a long-running legal battle over abuses at the jail.
Mr. Bharara documented some of the mistreatment of adolescents at Rikers in a
report last summer that depicted a deep-seated culture of violence in which
inmates were battered for minor infractions and often seriously injured by
poorly trained and supervised officers who routinely used force for the purpose
of inflicting pain — and got away with it because other officers covered up for
them. The report also noted that correction officers bent on vengeance against
inmates were able to carry out the beatings in areas of the complex they knew
were free of security cameras.
Beyond that, the investigation found that regulations requiring officers to
promptly report either using force or witnessing its use by others were
routinely ignored. Mr. Bharara’s office pointed to a horrific instance of this
problem when it charged one current and two former correction officers this
month in connection with the 2012 beating death of an inmate and a conspiracy to
make it seem that the violence used against the inmate was justified.
Instead of suing the city itself, the federal Justice Department last year
joined a pending class action that charged the Department of Correction with
failing to supervise officers who committed acts of brutality. The suit, Nunez
v. City of New York, was well along in the litigation process, having been filed
in 2011 by the Legal Aid Society and two law firms, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff &
Abady and Ropes & Gray.
After months of negotiations with the city, the parties announced on Monday that
they had reached a settlement agreement containing a broad package of reforms
that will be overseen by an independent monitor who will closely assess
compliance and submit periodic reports to the court. Among other things, the
agreement requires the jail system to develop new policies for how force is
used, reported and investigated; install thousands of new surveillance cameras;
and improve staff recruitment and screening.
The agreement pays special attention to adolescents on Rikers Island, who were
shown to be especially poorly treated in last summer’s Justice Department
report. For example, the officers who work with adolescents will need to be
better trained to handle this age group. The disciplinary procedures used with
them will need to be revamped from top to bottom — and solitary confinement,
which is particularly harmful for the young, will no longer be allowed for
inmates under the age of 18.
The need for such a policy was underscored this month when a young former inmate
who had spent nearly two years in solitary confinement at Rikers hanged himself
at his family’s home. Most important, the city, with the help of the monitor,
will try to find a place away from Rikers Island to house young inmates.
The settlement agreement is an important first step. But given the city’s past
inability to stay focused on this problem, the courts and the Justice Department
will need to stay involved until the reform job is done.
A version of this editorial appears in print on June 24, 2015, on page A22 of
the New York edition with the headline: Ending the Rikers Nightmare. Order
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