Violence is endemic, but it is not immutable.
New York City’s jails are in a dire state. This is not a new thing to say. In fact, it has been said so often that many New Yorkers have become numb to it.
There have been many terrible tragedies, with no less than 33 deaths over the last three years. But the people incarcerated in New York’s jails lack the kind of voice and political power necessary to drive change. There was a brief moment a few years ago when a grassroots political movement emerged, led by the formerly incarcerated. That movement crested with the passage of legislation that would allow for the building of a series of smaller jails in four of the five boroughs to replace the crumbling jail complex on Rikers Island. It may not have been a perfect plan, but it did represent a way forward.
That moment seems a long time ago. The grassroots enthusiasm has faded. Mayor Eric Adams has devoted precious little energy to the task of implementing the plan he inherited. Meanwhile, the jails on Rikers Island continue to deteriorate, with the crumbling infrastructure good for providing materials for makeshift weapons, but not humane living or working conditions. The heat isn’t sufficient in winter and there is not enough air conditioning to make the summer months bearable. All of this helps to spur further violence.
This issue on conditions inside Rikers is the second in a series that Vital City is offering to try to figure a way out of the enduring mess of the City’s jails. Our first issue focused on how the number of people incarcerated might be reduced while still preserving public safety. Among other topics, we looked at how the length of a person’s stay in jail contributes to violence and identified reforms that could speed case processing and shorten jail stays. The New York State Court System was listening. In recent weeks, the court system has announced plans to attack this problem head on, reducing the kinds of delays that lead many people to be held on Rikers for months on end. (It probably helped that one of the contributors to our first Rikers issue was the chief administrative judge of the state’s court system.)
This issue asks a fundamental question: how can the appallingly brutal and chaotic conditions inside the jails be fixed?
The well-documented physical violence in New York City’s jails is driven by intersecting government dysfunctions, including a lack of accountability and direction for staff, a deep resistance to using data in decision making, and unions that are often an obstacle to progress. Beyond head strikes and pepper spray, brutality is dealt through unimaginably harsh daily conditions and an “us versus them” mentality that permeates all levels of the jail agency.
Violence is a perennial problem in American jails and prisons, but it is not an immutable condition. We know this from abroad where, as Brie Williams and Cyrus Ahalt detail, the Scandinavians successfully reformed a harsh correctional system into one that offers a dignified and decent life inside. That model does not need to be unique to Norway and Sweden. Jordan Hyatt and Synøve N. Andersen describe a “Little Scandinavia” project now underway in the Pennsylvania prison system that has shown some early promising results. Nneka Jones Tapia, the former warden of the Chicago jails, details how she helped bring the system out from under a federal consent decree by implementing a more humane approach. Angela Hawken describes successful experiments, designed together with both officers and people incarcerated, to improve conditions and reduce tension through small and achievable wins. And Malcolm Feeley and Van Swearingen offer a history of how litigation helped to change the Southern plantation prison.
But while there are glimmers here and there, wholesale change is not where we are now in New York. The former chief of trials and investigations for the Department of Correction, Sarena Townsend, and journalists Reuven Blau and Graham Rayman trace the failures of management and the pernicious role that the correction unions have played in making conditions worse on Rikers. Make no mistake: the conditions are horrific. Jessy Edwards details the hidden thirty year history of rape of those incarcerated and the impunity or indifference of an “accountability” system unwilling or unable to address the perpetrators. The sociologist Bruce Western describes how the impoverished circumstances of incarcerated individuals creates a vicious cycle of human degradation.
So what, really, can be done? A panel of experts addressed this question last month in a discussion moderated by the New York Times reporter Jan Ransom, whose award-winning investigative reporting has laid bare the cold mechanics of mismanagement and the dismaying results on the lives of those who work and are housed in the jails. Those participating in the discussion, including a former correction commissioner, Michael Jacobson and a former first deputy mayor, Stanley Brezenoff, honed in on the structural problems and suggested a new kind of agency or authority that would have responsibility for the jails’ condition and operations that might overcome either the failure of will or capacity of the current set up. Jacobson also hammered home the concern about the revolving door of commissioners, none staying longer than two years, and the insistent need for a federal receiver to provide more durable leadership.
The federal court which is currently overseeing a federal consent decree implemented in 2015 to reduce the unconstitutional levels of violence is now considering whether a receiver – an individual who would act as a chief executive with powers broader than the correction commissioner – should be installed. A number of experts, including Sara Norman, who led the efforts to argue for a receiver to help oversee the mental health facilities of the California prison system, and Zach Carter, a former NYC Corporation Counsel, weigh in on the question. They note the key importance of a leader who can operate without fear or favor, whose only goal is the improvement of conditions for all who work and reside in the facilities -- and who will not leave till the job is done.
The role of politics, for good and ill, threads through this issue. Dana Kaplan tells the story of how politics came together to move the city to “Close Rikers.” All New Yorkers have lived through the historic changes that have happened since then. The politics have shifted. We have a different mayor. We have gone through a global pandemic and a significant increase in crime. These changes have complicated the effort to close the jails on Rikers Island.
But some things never change. Politics without governance, and governance without accountability, will always result in failure. And that’s where we are now: in a quagmire of good intentions unrealized. We hope that this issue offers some concrete suggestions of the ways out of the mess. It will take a long time but, with the right focus, it can be done.