Speaker 1: Even if you don't live in New York, you probably
Speaker 1: know about Riker's Island if you watch Law and Order episodes.
Speaker 1: It's the jail complex that the prosecutors on the show
Speaker 1: often threatened to send suspects to, and where they often
Speaker 1: plea bargain with the incarcerated. It's also a jail notorious
Speaker 1: for extraordinary violence and brutality. A report in April by
Speaker 1: a federal monitor said guards use brutal force against inmates
Speaker 1: at an alarming rate, and the fights among inmates have grown.
Speaker 1: The city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to
Speaker 1: improve conditions at Rikers to no avail now. After increasing
Speaker 1: public and political pressure to close down Rikers, New York
Speaker 1: City Mayor Bill Deblasio has come out with a plan
Speaker 1: to shut the jail down over a ten year span,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of ifs to making it work.
Speaker 1: My guests are Michael Mushlin, professor at Pace University Law School,
Speaker 1: and Jonathan Blanks, a researcher at the Cato Institute. Let's
Speaker 1: begin with both of your reactions to de Blasio's plan. Michael,
Speaker 1: why don't you start? Sure? Well, I think it's a
Speaker 1: very sensible plan that I think is in the interests
Speaker 1: of all New Yorkers. Rikers Island really has become a
Speaker 1: notorious place. I called it an OpEd I wrote recently,
Speaker 1: a devil's island. Uh. It's isolated, it's violent, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's wasteful. And I think the decision to close it,
Speaker 1: while it's very difficult to accomplishes, a very sensible one,
Speaker 1: and I think it will benefit all of us. And
Speaker 1: I think the mayor's responding to a report of a
Speaker 1: commission that studied this subject for a while, and that
Speaker 1: that was head but headed by the Chief Judge of
Speaker 1: the New York State, the ex Chief Judge of the
Speaker 1: retired Chief Judge of New York State that recommended this,
Speaker 1: and um and uh, I think it's a uh. I
Speaker 1: applaud the mayor for endorsing the report of the Litman report.
Speaker 1: All right, Jonathan, what's your reaction. I too was impressed
Speaker 1: with the report. I think his plan is it correctly
Speaker 1: identifies a lot of the problems with Rikers and Jail's
Speaker 1: generally it's not a perfect plan, but the goals, the
Speaker 1: goals that he lifted to, you know, find different ways
Speaker 1: to reduce the number of people that are going to
Speaker 1: be in there in the first place is very laudable. Um.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that isn't quite mentioned
Speaker 1: in the plan, but I think people need to think
Speaker 1: about is using a cage as a remedy to socialis
Speaker 1: is not necessarily the best thing. It should be the
Speaker 1: last uh, the last remedy to UH for people who
Speaker 1: commit crimes. If people can be released on their own
Speaker 1: recognizance as the people are, that's good. But there's still
Speaker 1: a very large population there that are subject to these abuses,
Speaker 1: and I think finding more and better ways, some of
Speaker 1: which were outlined in his plan are is a very
Speaker 1: good step forward. The plan calls for reducing the inmate
Speaker 1: population down to five thousand. New York City had a
Speaker 1: record low crime rate last year, So Michael, how will
Speaker 1: that be done? Well? First of all, I think that
Speaker 1: it's important to point out that most of the people
Speaker 1: on Rikers Island have not been convicted of any crime.
Speaker 1: They're they're being held while awaiting trial. It's also important
Speaker 1: to note that that way, that's that over two thirds
Speaker 1: of them only spent about thirty days in Rikers Island.
Speaker 1: So the notion of this is we're not talking about
Speaker 1: a prison where people have been convicted and and they're
Speaker 1: being sent to They're being sent to prison for rehabilitation,
Speaker 1: for punishment, for for for safety of the community. So
Speaker 1: that's one thing to talk about. And so really the
Speaker 1: way so and that short period of time that so
Speaker 1: many people spend there may not seem that significant, but
Speaker 1: it's a highly disruptive, it's highly expensive, and we're punishing
Speaker 1: people who haven't been convicted. Um. So it's really important
Speaker 1: to try to figure out smart ways to reduce that
Speaker 1: that um that population, and it can be done. There
Speaker 1: really are three basic techniques that we've already begun to
Speaker 1: implement and that have led to a significant reduction. At
Speaker 1: its height, there were twenty thousand people that were held
Speaker 1: on Rikers Island about twenty years ago and now we're
Speaker 1: down to about ten thousand, and this plan is to
Speaker 1: reduce it to five thousand. And the way to do
Speaker 1: that is to is to come up with alternatives to bail,
Speaker 1: to reform the bails system, to figure out rather than
Speaker 1: putting a dollar amount on who who goes to prison,
Speaker 1: who goes to I'm sorry, who goes to jail, and
Speaker 1: who goes to Rikers Island to make assessments, realistic assessments
Speaker 1: of really who is going to need to be detained
Speaker 1: rather than just put a number on it. You know
Speaker 1: that the number is usually around two thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: if a person has that two thousand dollars, they buy
Speaker 1: their way out. That that really doesn't make sense in
Speaker 1: two ways. There are people that can't afford the two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and then they go to prison. They go
Speaker 1: to jail essentially because they're poor, or there are people
Speaker 1: there's some people for whom we don't really we don't
Speaker 1: We don't want them to buy their way out because
Speaker 1: they're either not going to come back to trial or
Speaker 1: because maybe they posed a thread. I've been talking with
Speaker 1: Michael Mushlin, professor at Pace University Law School, and Jonathan Blanks,
Speaker 1: are researcher at the Cato Institute about New York City
Speaker 1: Mayor Build Blasio's plan to shut down Rikers Island Prison
Speaker 1: over a ten year spam and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of ifs involved in this. Jonathan. An independent commission created
Speaker 1: by the City Council that we were talking about before,
Speaker 1: call for state law reforms such as reclassifying criminal offenses
Speaker 1: such as fair evasion, marijuana possession in public you and
Speaker 1: gravity knives as civil offenses bill. The mayor has not
Speaker 1: said has not approved that. Is that something that we
Speaker 1: should be thinking about. Yeah, I mean, if you're going
Speaker 1: to think about changing in jail policy, you also have
Speaker 1: to think of the inputs enough going to be policing policy.
Speaker 1: So when the police are out there giving summons is
Speaker 1: or making arrests for whatever it is, you know, they
Speaker 1: if they continue to use the criminal law to move
Speaker 1: them into jail, that's just going There's nothing uh rockers
Speaker 1: can do about that if they have to take them in.
Speaker 1: So making these civil offenses can reduce the jail population,
Speaker 1: reduce the stress on trying to find places to house
Speaker 1: these people. And Michael, is this really then a plan
Speaker 1: for criminal justice reform as well? Well? I I think
Speaker 1: it is, and I think we could even make it
Speaker 1: more so Actually, um um, when way I think we
Speaker 1: could really make it much more comprehensive is if we
Speaker 1: use if we use the land that is available on
Speaker 1: Rikers Island two to bring back people who are serving
Speaker 1: prison sentences in far flung places in New York State,
Speaker 1: of New York State, New York City people who are
Speaker 1: sentenced to prison are sentenced two hundred miles away from
Speaker 1: New York. Many of those people are parents. There's a
Speaker 1: hundred and five thousand children who have who have a
Speaker 1: parent in prison. Uh. All the research shows that if
Speaker 1: those people were held whole closer to the communities from
Speaker 1: which they come, we would get far more benefit, uh,
Speaker 1: far less recidivism, far more reintegration into the community. And
Speaker 1: so I proposed, and I wrote an OpEd on this
Speaker 1: that was published by the Daily News about a month ago,
Speaker 1: that once we closed Rikers Island for preacher detainees, we
Speaker 1: should seriously consider using that that location, which is remote
Speaker 1: for pre trial detainees, but is ironically not at all
Speaker 1: remote for people who are serving New York City people
Speaker 1: are serving prison sentences, to create to build prisons, to
Speaker 1: use that space for for prisoners. Okay, speaking of prisoners, uh,
Speaker 1: Jonathan in new jails. The there's a question that maybe
Speaker 1: a hurdle, and that's building smaller jails in each of
Speaker 1: the boroughs to replace Rikers. And there are no specific
Speaker 1: details on that in Doblasio's plan. Isn't that bound to
Speaker 1: bring opposition from residents in those boroughs? Most certainly. I
Speaker 1: mean would be sort of not in my backyard quintessential
Speaker 1: example as jails. No one wants them in their in
Speaker 1: their neighborhoods. But we really have to think about what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do, what they're trying to do here,
Speaker 1: and that is, you know, trying to make community based
Speaker 1: system for for rehabilitation and to just basically the community
Speaker 1: takes care of its own people. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a good idea. I think it's going to be along um,
Speaker 1: excuse me, it's going to be a long haul trying
Speaker 1: to convince people that is the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: But I think if you can convey the benefits of
Speaker 1: not necessarily throwing people in cages, getting people into rehab
Speaker 1: getting the mental health uh services that they need, that
Speaker 1: communities may may become more open to these uh these
Speaker 1: new buildings. And Michael, this also contains actually one billion
Speaker 1: dollars in capital improvements just to keep the infrastructure at
Speaker 1: Rikers over the next ten years. Is that a lot
Speaker 1: to spend on a prison that's going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: not used any longer. Well, I think two things. One
Speaker 1: is I think that can fit into what I said
Speaker 1: earlier that a lot of money to spend. But Riker's
Speaker 1: Island right now is really a very dangerous place where
Speaker 1: people are really being harmed significantly, not only the people
Speaker 1: that are being held there, but the staff that works there.
Speaker 1: And so it's really imperative that we meet minimal constitutional
Speaker 1: standards wherever we hold people. And so I think that
Speaker 1: that spen, that that expenditure is essential, especially since we're
Speaker 1: talking about it at least a decade UH in the transition.
Speaker 1: But if we were to use that money to renovate
Speaker 1: those facilities, we would then have places that we could
Speaker 1: use for for prisoners. The other thing that I would
Speaker 1: say about locating the jails that that are going to
Speaker 1: be UH needed in the in the boroughs outside of
Speaker 1: Riker's Island, I want to second what Jonathan said about
Speaker 1: that and also say we already have people in in
Speaker 1: jails in the local boroughs, so this isn't a new thing. Also,
Speaker 1: we would we love locating them in areas near courts,
Speaker 1: so it's not talking about putting them into into purely
Speaker 1: residential purely residential areas. And also the other thing to
Speaker 1: say is that most of these people are non violent people.
Speaker 1: So Jonathan, what is your opinion about whether the closure
Speaker 1: of rikers within ten years is likely to happen. Um, well,
Speaker 1: a ten years is a long time in politics shift
Speaker 1: and if there's like an increasing crime, or if there's
Speaker 1: you know, a new mayor that comes in it doesn't
Speaker 1: want to do it, obviously, that's UH that that could
Speaker 1: change things directly. I don't know how likely it is,
Speaker 1: but I hope, I hope it happens. And I think
Speaker 1: any any way to try and lower the number of
Speaker 1: people in there is UH an attempt worth making. And Michael,
Speaker 1: about a minute left, what's your opinion about whether this
Speaker 1: can be done in ten years. I think it can
Speaker 1: definitely be done in ten years. I think it's going
Speaker 1: to take the will to do it. I it's really
Speaker 1: so wonderful that we have an elected officials that that's
Speaker 1: running the City of New York who has committed to
Speaker 1: doing this, and the City Council is also on board,
Speaker 1: and I think it's gonna you know, I think if
Speaker 1: we have a commitment to making a more sensible, safer,
Speaker 1: SMARTYR system, one that really benefits the people of New York,
Speaker 1: I think I think we've shown as a city we
Speaker 1: can make these things happen. All right, Well, thank you both.
Speaker 1: That's Michael Mushland, professor at Pace University Law School, and
Speaker 1: Jonathan Blanks, a research at the Cato Institute. That's it
Speaker 1: for this edition of Bloomberg Law. Will be back Monday
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