Factually! with Adam Conover - Former Inmates Reveal Life Inside American Prisons with David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/adamconover Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee!The American prison system isn’t just designed to keep inmates locked up��it’s built to keep the rest of us from truly seeing what happens inside. Rikers Island, New York City’s largest jail, has long been notorious for its inhumane conditions, including mistreatment, sexual abuse, and inmates being held in solitary confinement for hundreds of days. But understanding the full extent of these horrors is nearly impossible without firsthand experience. Today, Adam speaks with David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan—criminal justice reformers who were incarcerated at Rikers after protesting—about their time inside and their new book, City Time: On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island. Find Jarrod and David’s book at http://www.factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I don't know anything. Hey everybody, welcome to Factually, I'm Adam Conover. Thanks so much for joining me on the show again. You know, I'm on tour right now, and a little while back I was in San Francisco. And in the San Francisco Bay, I saw Alcatraz, the notorious island prison that is now a tourist trap. I didn't visit it, but you know, it's famously one of the most visited tourist attractions in all of California. You can go with school kids and think about Al Capone or Sean Connery and the Rock. But the reason you can visit it is because everything about Alcatraz is way back in the past.

The prison is closed. Now, in New York, where I grew up, the shitty island jail never actually shut down. It is still fucking there. Rikers Island sits in the East River in the Bronx and contains the city's largest jail. And everything that is wrong with the criminal justice system in America happens at Rikers.

Rikers Island has aided and abetted the sexual abuse of inmates. It's denied treatment for those with mental illness. And it's stuck inmates in solitary for hundreds of days. It is overcrowded, violent, and is basically a hell place, which the city has declared for years that they have wanted to close, but have been unable to. I mean, the amount of abuse and neglect at Rikers

is so extreme that if you look squarely at it, it's impossible to think anything other than that our criminal justice system is fucked up on the deepest level and needs to be pulled out root and branch. And that is why it is so difficult to look closely at Rikers. See, the thing about prisons is that they are set up so that we don't think about them. In fact, so that we can't think about them. They are by their very design, closed off, secret, a world apart from the rest of American society. And as a result, we get almost no insight into the horrible things that happen within them every single day.

But today, on this show, we are going to. We are going to get a look inside Rikers from two people who lived there. But before we get to this fascinating conversation that you cannot get anywhere else, I just want to remind you that if you want to support this show and all the conversations we bring you, head to Patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show ad free. And don't forget, I am on the road with my brand new hour of standup comedy right now. In April, I'll be in Providence, Rhode Island, Vancouver, British Columbia. Okay, that's Canada, but you know, it's North America.

You get the picture. In April, I'll be in Eugene, Oregon, Charleston, South Carolina. Just added a date in Charleston at the Wits End, then Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Oklahoma. And then finally, Spokane, Washington and Tacoma, Washington. Head to adamconover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. And now let's get to today's show. Today, my guests are two criminal justice reformers who ended up in Rikers for protest actions

and wrote a book about their experience and everything that they saw inside. Jared Shanahan is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Governor State University who writes about incarceration. And David Campbell is a writer and translator. And the book they wrote is called City Time on Being Sentenced to Rikers Island. Please welcome David and Jared.

David and Jared, thank you so much for being on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. So you're back with us in American society now, but you have recently served time at Rikers in New York. But I wanna start by saying, you guys are not the type of people

who normally end up in Rikers, right? You're not our sort of average idea of a couple lefty academics, right? Not the sort of people we normally think of as spending time in Rikers. So I'm curious, A, how did you end up there, but B, why is sharing your perspective important? Yeah, so I can take that as a start.

I mean, we both ended up at Rikers, um, due to our activism. I mean, I was arrested at an anti-fascist protest that turned into a brawl in January, 2018. Um, Jared, uh, you know, if you'll allow me to, to summarize briefly, it was arrested at, at a black or you can go ahead and, and tell it in your own words, it's probably better. Oh no. Um, yeah, I was really heavily involved in the street movement in two thousand fourteen that immediately proceeded the ferguson rebellion.

And the police murder of eric garner in new york. I was i was arrested for what's called a do you rest basically which is what you are you see an activist getting arrested and you prevent that from happening. So we both got involved in some stuff that's definitely not legal in the technical sense at protests and ended up in Rikers. And we're definitely not your average Rikers prisoner. For a number of reasons, this was clear to us upon arrival, even before arrival and preparing for incarceration, you know, this, this was pretty clear to us, you know, besides the fact that they were white and white people constitute about 10% of the

prisoner population on exactly 10% percent. Wow. It's the same for the guards. Actually the demographics for prisoners and guards, at least in terms of race, are pretty much the same, which is interesting. But even beyond that, I mean, even among other white prisoners,

it's like, you know, we stand out for the way we talk, the way we carry ourselves, the sort of references we have, the way our bodies look, including in little ways, like, you know, having all your teeth. That's not a joke, right? Like, that's a criterion that people use to kind of gauge whether or not you've been living rough,

like, you know, maybe addicted to hard drugs, living on the street, that sort of thing. You know, none of that was true for us. And, you know, we're not in any gangs like we hadn't been incarcerated before. You know, we had the fact that our cases came out of activism was also rare and sort of like interesting to people in and of itself. Um, you know, obviously we're college educated, we come from middle class backgrounds, like we're not native New Yorkers. There's so many things.

We cover a lot of these in the introduction to the book that put us in the category that we define as quote, you don't belong here because that's the thing that that we were told over and over again. Yeah. By by guards and other prisoners alike. You were like, yeah, let me the fuck out. Like I sure. Yeah, I tried to agree. I tried to agree while pivoting to to the fact that nobody really belongs in jail, um, but, you know, but yeah. So nonetheless, we decided to write this book and I think it was, it was a tough decision for us, right? Because we're, we're not the typical Rikers prisoner or such a thing exists. But the sad fact is the typical Rikers prisoner does not write a book like this. Um, the, what we wrote is it, this is not the story of hard time, like from like

the real prisoner guys, you know, um, this is, it's of hard time, like from like the real prisoner guys, you know, um, this is, it's what's called a prison ethnography, which means that we spent, um, considerable time gathering as much hard data as we could, we, we measured the rooms, we counted the toilets, we took scrupulous notes of all the social interactions we'd be held. Um, it's a kind of very rigorous social inquiry. Um, and the reason why we decided to publish what we collected, uh, despite being highly atypical Rikers prisoners, um, is that we were encouraged not only

by, uh, former political prisoners that we knew the people in our lives and activist communities, but also by the guys we were locked up with to use whatever skills and social power we had to publicize the awful conditions in this place so i'm glad we let with this because david and i are not. Trying to do like orange is the new black or whatever. This is the book is not about us There's the it some of the most powerful passages are us describing things that we experienced But the book is very much about this particular facility this type of incarceration and the social life that unfolds there But there's a long history of when you're trying to alert America's middle class population that does not have access to spaces like these or to issues like these. There's a long history in America of having the outsider

view as a way to get us into them. You mentioned Orange is the New Black. I think that was probably for a lot of middle class people who read it, you know, they're, oh, I'm seeing it through the eyes of the person who experienced it, the person who is similar to me. I also think of, you know, what's so effective about 12 years of slave, both originally as a slave narrative

and then, you know, in modern day as a film, it's because, you know, Solomon Northridge starts out as a normal citizen, a black citizen, but a normal citizen of a, I believe a northern city who like experienced slavery for the first time. So the fresh experience of it is, that perspective is something that helps bring people in. Of course, the flip side of that is that you are accused

of being a tourist, right? That you only have a brief experience there. And so I'm just a little curious. Well, actually, no, let's get into that later. I'm curious about how you sort of get past the sort of natural limitations of your perspective. But I mean tell me what was your takeaway, what did you uncover about this place through that experience,

and what truths are you trying to reveal in the book? Oh man, well there's so much there, and I think we may get into sort of the first part of your question, uh, through that experience and what, what, what truths are you trying to reveal in the book? Oh man. Uh, well, there's so much there. And I think we may get into sort of the first part of your question, just in responding naturally to the second part. Um, there, there is, uh, a lot in, uh, American society that encourages us not to talk about what goes on behind bars. Right.

And in general, when researchers go to these places, they can't be sure they're getting real data. Um, we cite one, one prison ethnographer in the book who refers to these sort of studies where researchers go into prison or jail facilities with like a permit, you know, and like quote unquote unfettered access as quasi ethnographies, you know, because they're not, you know, you're not getting, you can't be sure that you're getting authentic data, right? Whereas if you go in as a prisoner, it's like, okay, well, I can tell you what I'm observing, right? I can tell you I have blind spots, I can tell you what those are, as far as I know, or as far as other people pointed them out to me. But this is what I'm observing. And this is what I'm experiencing day to day, in terms of identifying what you don't know the holes in your knowledge, right? Because it does, it like cut both ways this outsider's perspective and it imposes a certain number of limits and blind spots on your perspective right or like those are integral to your perspective inherent to it right but it also allows you to come at this thing with fresh eyes that you know most people there they're coming from over police and over incarcerated communities

they take it for granted like they have a better idea how this works. They've heard about it. You know, there's there's just a conceptualization of it as being possible. Right. Whereas like in the world that I come from, you know, people just don't generally go to jail as a rule. Right. So, you know, so in talking to other people and in trying to check your own assumptions, right, which is good advice just for going to jail and figuring out the lay of the land in the first part of your bid in any case, right?

It's like you kind of stay quiet, you keep to yourself, you observe, you note down what to observe. In our case, trying to be participant observers, which was an approach that was recommended to us by, like Jared said, different different, uh, former political prisoners for me. A member of my defense committee had trained as an anthropologist, had done fieldwork and really encouraged me to take this participant observer perspective as a sort of mental defense against the disorienting effects and the, the frankly terrifying effects of entering this new scary world. effects of entering this new scary world is to like kind of approach it. Essentially like an investigative journalist where you're just like, cool. So this is rare and valuable data that researchers can't really get even if

they want to. Right. So that does that make sense? Does that kind of respond at least to the first part of your question? I know we pivot. Yeah, absolutely. I also think something that you have that the folks who are more acquainted with the system don't have

is the capacity to be shocked, right? Because to them it's, as you say, if you live with it every day, it becomes normal. Oh yeah, this is how the world works. But you maybe have a little bit more of an ability to go, just to have the reaction of, this is fucked up. Right? The freshness of it can be a valuable perspective. But there's also things that you only learn

by having the perspective of someone going through the system rather than someone coming in from the outside. Or like being taken on a tour by a warden sounds like being taken on a tour of North Korea, right? By the government there. It's like you're only to see half of it. You're not getting the real insider view. So, I mean, tell me what you saw there.

Like, let's just start at the beginning. Like what is, what is intake like? Well, I mean, intake, as you might imagine, is, is, you know, largely centered on this process of making you into a prisoner. The literature, this is traditionally referred to as a prisonization, right? Where there's like this sort of liminal moment when you're stark naked, you've handed over all your belongings, including your clothes, right? And then you are assigned a set of jail clothes and a jail number and a jail ID.

Right. And you've become a prisoner and you don't know how that works. Right. Um, now in theory, the institution then explains to you how things work. And we found this would be one of our main conclusions, that the institution really does not function in any way that presents a coherent, logical reality to the prisoners for them to enter into,

does not try to explain that to them, and does not present it to them, and it's day-to-day goings on, right? So a concept that we've tried to add to the dialogue here is social intake, which is once you are made a prisoner by the institution, the real lion's share of getting you oriented and helping you figure out how things work and what's where and who you can talk to for what comes from your fellow prisoners, right? There's an enormous amount of solidarity of advice, of resource sharing that is volunteered

by people upon arrival to help you find your footing and get around, which is very much at odds with this sort of traditional pop culture image of new arrivals in jail and prisons. Now, it's important to specify that we're not saying it's like this everywhere. We are speaking only to our very narrow experience. Um, as, uh, as jail tourists, it's funny. You mentioned that actually earlier, cause I've used that term before. And in interviews about myself, it's like, I'm, I'm a jail tourist, even after having done a year on Rikers, which is pretty long, but Riker standards, most

people do not stay for 12 months straight. Yeah. Um, some, some fellow prisoners and, and, and some guards called me a lifer as a joke. Um, but like even after having done that comparatively long Some fellow prisoners and some guards called me a lifer as a joke. But like even after having done that comparatively long stretch of time, I'm a tourist because I don't really come from a world in which people do time. And I don't plan on going back like I haven't been before. You know, it's not part of my life in the way that it is for most of the people there.

Right. And by the way, and then I'll pass it off to Jared and let him get a word in, these people, another one of our main conclusions, are surprisingly normal, right? Like they are people from the block in New York, they're people you would run into in the bodega. In fact, I ran into four or five people from my neighborhood. Now, obviously I'm a white guy originally from Virginia,

living in Crown Heights for 10 years. I'm not originally from there, but these people recognized me and said, oh, hey, you shop at the fine fair in Kingston. Oh, cool. Yeah. Nice. This. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. So from your neighborhood, from your neighborhood where you're like, oh, hey man, good to see you. Yeah. Yeah. Might be more than a couple. Four or five, I would say. Yeah. Which speaks to how routine time in Rikers is

for the citizens of New York. Yeah. And that's something that we really wanted to emphasize in the book. And emphasized by looking at the particular type of time that this book is about. So, this is about sentenced time being served in a city jail. And real quick, if your viewers don't know this, the words jail and prison are often used interchangeably. I even do it myself. But in a technical sense, a prison

is an institution administered by the state or federal government where you do an excess of a year or two. This is hard time. You do that in a prison. You've been convicted and you're sent there. A jail, and Rikers is a jail, it's a complex of buildings on a literal island. A jail is a place where you await sentencing, and the vast majority of people on Rikers are awaiting sentencing,

and if they're convicted, they will go to prison. Or a smaller number of people serve sentences that are deemed too short for the state system. So like David said he was he was like the big man on campus with his one year at Rikers in the sentence facility because that's about as much time as you're going to do. Um, so, uh, what the people that you meet, um, at a facility like the ones that we were locked up in are cycling in and out all the time. Um, and one of the reasons why I was initially attracted to this book was because one of the first things that struck me when I got there was just how close this was to the street in New York.

People are coming in all the time, getting out all the time. And geographically speaking, you're looking at the Empire State Building, the planes for flying overhead for LaGuardia Airport. It is a key part of how New York City functions. And it's something that's a race. You're, it sounds like it sounds as much a part of New York as like the Port Authority bus terminal. Like you're going to have to go there sometimes and it's not the nicest place,

but Hey, depending on who you are, you might need to go there a lot. You might find yourself in and out of there a bunch, except in the case of Rikers, you know, almost everybody goes through the Port Authority or Penn station once in a while, but there's a whole slice of New York and of America that never goes to a place like Rikers never thinks about it, never has a view into it. It's erased as you say, but it's all around you. Once you notice it, like David and I both had the experience of sitting next to someone

on the train and looking at their shoes and saying, Oh, I know where you got those shoes. Or you see somebody walking around with all their shit in like a little, in a clear trash bag and you say, okay, I know where you woke up this morning. So the more, the more you're hip to it, you see it all over the city. It's made visible to you. Yeah. A lot of the slang that becomes popular in New York comes from Rikers. Sorry, David.

Yeah. There's just a lot of important tells when you've been there that you see around the city and, and it's important to emphasize that there's a large section of the American population or more, you know, narrowly speaking, the New York population that like never thinks about this, never deals with this. But a working class black and brown New Yorkers especially are so intimately familiar with the process of going to Rikers and spending time there and coming out that, you know, they often just refer to Rikers as the island, right? In a city built on a whole bunch of little islands, right?

Because like, we all know which one we're talking about, you know? I mean, it is sometimes shockingly common. Like when I was, I was preparing to go to jail, I was trying to get input from as many people as I could who had been incarcerated, especially who had served short sentences on Rikers because if you're in the about 10% of prisoners on Rikers who is serving a sentence with a definite length like you've been found guilty of a crime and you are going to be in jail until this date because for some reason that's the best option I guess. You're not in pretrial detention right?

I was looking for people like that, That's actually how I met Jared. I went to the grocery store, the fine fair on Kingston one day actually. And I asked the, my vegetable guy, this wonderful Guatemalan guy. You know, I just chatted with kind of casually while I did my grocery shopping for years and I told him I was going to have to go to jail and, and, uh, he was like, oh, um, yeah, what, what building are they going to send you to? And I was like the six and he was like, oh, yeah, I did three months in the six last year It's tranquilo, you know

My vegetable guy did it I can do it, you know, that's tranquilo I mean that'll make you feel a little better before he was he just trying to make you feel better Was it really tranquilo? I think he was a pretty fucking hard ass dude. So maybe that has to be. Oh, OK. Yeah. There's also a sense among like people who do who have done time in the other buildings on Rikers that the sentence building is the calmest facility.

It's a place where nobody's in there for murder. Nobody's looking at 20 years to life or whatever, you know. And so most people in there, even the real hard asses will, are just as likely to walk away from a fight as to get into lunch. Like, listen, I just want to get out of here. I just want to go home. Like you're not there for very long. Um, and, and so to get back to the intake process, because I think it's so fascinating.

Um, it really is a way that there's this whole network of kind of socialized knowledge that runs throughout the city, kind of revealed itself to us. Like all these guys inside and outside, I had a conversation with someone in line at court who found out that I was going to get locked up. And he's like, all right, man, listen to me. Don't look at the calendar. Don't look at the clock. That's all you gotta do. There's all of this kind of folk wisdom or social knowledge where people help each other adjust to this setting to get through it, to survive it.

And we both went in expecting kind of what you see on television, which is just people are preying on each other all the time and doing all this terrible stuff. And certainly that happens, you know, here and there, but the default state that we saw among city time prisoners was, was as David said, solidarity. Yeah. Of, of, uh, man, I just went through this.

I know what you're going through. Let me at least get a little bit of pleasure by giving you some advice. It's a human pleasure to see someone going through something and say, hey, let me help you out. I've been through this before. It relieves a little bit of pressure on you when you can do that. I can imagine myself doing the same thing

in that circumstance. And hey, there's nothing else to do, but talk to people. Right? Right, I've spent a lot of time in 12 step programs and it's basically the same. You help yourself by helping other people. Sorry, David, I cut you off. No, it just feels good.

And it's important for people to feel like they're not bad people when they've been told they need to spend X amount of time in a shitty place because they're bad people or because they've done wrong, right? You see a lot of people sort of showcasing their sort of like ethical norms, you know, by, you know, even though they're, you you know members of a gang and entitled to like.

Put the line for chow getting in the line in the order they arrive with other people right or like. Give me their their slot on the phone cuz certain points of the day the use of the phones can be regimented by who ever running the dorm whether it's a gang or a non gang affiliated Take a neutral power structure, right? You can only use this phone if it's your turn, right? You'll see guys like the biggest toughest gang banging guy You can imagine give his slot over to like the little old man who just wants to make a phone call, right? because this is just me like purely, you know your conjecture but like to my understanding there like what I witnessed from people was pretty clearly at times coming from a place of,

I'm not a bad guy, right? And I'm doing good things, right? So like, that must confirm that I'm not a bad guy, right? It feels good to be nice to other people, and especially when you've been told that like, you belong in a place like this, right? Yeah. Folks, this episode is brought to you by Alma.

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I got to come back to the gang question in a second of gangs running these different facilities. But first, you know, a lot of folks in America, their default is to believe that a person in jail or in prison is a bad person. De facto, because they went through the criminal justice system, they were adjudicated bad, and so they should be treated badly.

You said earlier, no one really belongs in prison. I assume you maybe have a different view. But in terms of the people in Rikers, what are they mostly there for? You know, if you did an ethnography, what is the general population and what have they been charged or are about to be charged with? I think the most common for city time inmates at city time was sentenced folks, people serving short sentences on Rikers, as petty thefts, petty thefts.

So that would be like what we call the hustling and boosting category, right? So it's mostly people who have issues with heart drugs, homelessness, you know, all kinds of stuff. They live pretty rough lives and they, you know, they steal a little bit of this, a little bit of that to get by. Right. And some of them treat it as a veritable trade, like a veritable profession that

they take a lot of pride in. Um, you have a fair amount of small possession, uh, uh, convictions for drugs, uh, small possession, uh, convictions for guns. Uh, there's some, some other stuff like, you know, multiple like multiple DUIs, domestic violence stuff. There's assaults, I was in for assaults, stuff like that. That's like, some of the stuff that people are in for is not stuff that anyone would say was not serious you know. You know in the in the most general lay person sense of the term serious but but is not by any stretch the imagination like something you need to sequester people from civil society for right. I can use your stocking normal new yorkers does not serve to rehabilitate them and they clearly demonstrate the desire to live in a society that makes some sense, some sense in this governed by some rules because they create those rules in the absence of any coherent vision of a functioning world, uh, from

the institution, right? Oh, that's, that's fascinating. You're saying because the, the institution of Rikers gives them no structure, it gives them no instruction and how things should work, has no rationality to it. The, the people in Rikers are creating social structure for themselves by sharing information and stuff like that. And that is evidence that, Hey, they want more regularity than the institutions are giving them both in and out of Rikers. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's Jared said it before and I'll say it again. It's not really a society either of us want to, would want to live in. Right. But like, it makes some sense There's there's some like sort of if you do this you will get this if you don't do this you will get this right? There's someone you can go to for X thing right when you're having this problem. This is what you do And like there's lip service paid to all of these ideas by the institution But it is just Kafka esque in like the theest dictionary definition and sense of the term, right?

Like it is a brutal and observed bureaucracy that governs every waking second in your life. In a very cruel fashion, like anything that you ask a guard for, even if it's something like toilet paper, they treat you with suspicion, derision, they tell you to fuck off, shut up is the answer to a lot of questions. And the whole system, it reminds me of that movie, Idiocracy, it's really stupid. The people who administer it, let's just say, if they're intelligent, they never really led on

in discussions with me. And the message of the whole institution is like, we don't care about you, like fuck you. And in that setting, yeah, some people who live real hard on the outside, like I met some dudes who lived in my neighborhood and I figured out, oh, you're the guys who hang out in front of like the methadone place at Murrell Broadway.

I know, okay, I know your social world. You guys smoke K2 all day and yeah. So it's like some people who on the outside are in the absolute lowest rungs of like the city social ladder are in there creating elaborate rituals for how to keep a place clean. Um, how to, how to share food, how to handle conflict. Um, there's a lot of redistribution, like people who don't have enough, don't have enough are get the things that they need. Um, and it's not, this isn't, this is not a story about how prisoners are actually all great people who never did anything wrong.

We're not liberals, you know, um, this is, there's some, I met some dudes in there and I was, and I was like, man, I bet bet you cut my throat just for the money in my pocket but the vast majority of people who we encountered. More people who just have absolutely no social power on the outside. And what they're demonstrating above all else was just wanting to be a part of society, wanting to take on an active role in self governance and creating the world around them. And there's all kinds of really ingenious techniques, tactics that we go through in kind of almost boring detail in the book, all these kinds of MacGyver skills that guys develop, all these little hacks, all these little tricks, that people deploy remarkable ingenuity to build a whole social world in this

place where they have effectively just been abandoned by the city. Yeah. I think that really shows that, you know, when you leave people alone, people will create society out of nothing that we're social animals and that we always have that capacity within us. Yes, there's extremely hard cases, there are people who are extremely fucked up, but humanity as a whole will do this.

It's like you're showing a good side of humanity even at its darkest moment, but you're also showing a very dark side of humanity. Why is it that the institution abandons people in this way? You know, like you would think it would be to the institution's benefit to make the system more rational, to be like there is a system

to get toilet paper so there isn't shit everywhere. Right? Right? These people are being held by the state. You would think the state would say, okay, well, you gotta give them toilet paper, you gotta do this, you gotta do that, and would have a rational system for giving all those things.

You think that would result in less violence, less chaos in the nation's jails and prisons, yet this is what you hear everywhere when you talk to, it's not just Rikers, many, many prisons are like this, where the system is completely irrational. So why is that? It almost seems as though the state breaks down when you get to this place of maximal state power,

where the state is exerting its most power over its citizens, it's doing so in the least state-like way. It's just saying, ah, well, you're just in the fucking dungeon and who gives a shit? You know, we'll let chaos and rats roam rampant. Why? Man, that's a wonderful observation. You know, I can't tell you why there's a number of things that go into it. I can't tell you why just in a

one line zinger. I think if I had to, it would be you're in the dungeon and who gives a shit that permeates everything right that just becomes like, you know, a sort of mentality that the guards bring to work with them, they probably bring it home with them as well. You know, it's just like, you know, and they'll often try to flatten the fact that they're they're suffering through the same conditions for an eight hour shift with you by saying I'm in here same as you, when they don't want to give you an answer to something, you know, which like the first part is true,

we're both in here, but like, we're not in the same category, we're literally color coded, like you're in a different category. You know, but I mean, there's a number of reasons I think there's a deeply embedded cynicism in the entire penal system that, you know, the root causes that we can talk about, but it whether it's it's is ever intended to rehabilitate people, right? And would you see that sort of window dressing like rhetorically with things like department of correction, whatever, right? Like all this rhetoric about like getting people ready

to reintegrate into society. If you go to the New York City department of corrections website, you'll see all of these goals that are absolutely laughable, right? About rehabilitating people and preparing them for reentry, right? Like whether any of that stuff was ever true or not, anyone with two eyes can see that

it's not playing out that way, right? And what is me giving people toilet paper on time going to do to change that? And everyone around me says, you know, I'm a quote unquote, inmate lover if I do that. So like, why would I do that? When I could just like do this, you know, shuffle through the motions for 20 years and retire at 40 and, you know, then call it a day. Right. Like that. There's a lot that goes into it. I, but I think this sort of mentality, which, which really is founded on a very deep cynicism about this system that. I won't say it doesn't work because I do think it's working the way it's intended to. Right. Yeah. But it certainly does not work the way that a lot of people think it is supposed to work.

So I researched this question a lot. So before city time, I wrote a book called Captives, which is the history kind of of Rikers Island and how it came to be. And something that I came to the conclusion of very quickly and David has already said this is, this system is basically functioning like it's supposed to. It mirrors the way that our society treats people on the

outside. And there was a time in America, actually when they built a lot of facilities on Rikers, the prevailing idea was that most people who break the law can be rehabilitated and turned into wage laborers to work in factories and jobs like that, serve in the military. And the prisons and jails kind of served that function, right? Now, since the seventies, we just have high rates of, um, unemployment manufacturer. Um, and our, our society just actually just doesn't have any use for large numbers of people. Um, there's just no, there, there's, there's no, from, from the perspective of capitalism, there's just no point to these people's lives.

Um, and so, uh, the conditions at Rikers really just mirror the way that, uh, people are treated on the outside when they're poor, when they're homeless, when they have substance problems and are effectively just kind of left to their own devices to die. Um, and the second component I think of the story is, um, I think David's completely right about the cynicism among the guards. Something that I try to emphasize in captives is that it actually has a long political history. Most guards at Rikers are organized in a union called the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, which is an extremely powerful union in New York City politics. And throughout the years, they have demonstrated their willingness to break the law, to engage

in violence and to do whatever it takes basically to get what they want. And you know, like most unions, what they want is they want higher pay, they want better pensions, they want all this stuff. But something that they want more than anything else historically has been the freedom to do whatever they want in their dealings with prisoners. To use violence however they want, to neglect prisoners as much as they want, and to not have to suffer any consequences, to not get in trouble with civilian administrators, to not get sued.

And if you look at the history of the Rikers guards, this has been the foremost demand. Get the civilians out of here, limit the ability of the prisoners to sue us, to get us in trouble. In that way, actually, I think denying somebody toilet paper who needs to take a shit is one of the foulest things that you can do quite frankly. But it's just one of the million ways that they flex this power all day long. Which I don't have to do anything for you. It's a metric of how much power they've been able to build in their workplace. Yeah.

And just to piggyback on that really quick, it cannot be overstated how essential COBRA, the guards, the guards union, correctionsal officers benevolent association is to the question of why is Rikers always so shitty, right? Like this is something that people say time and again, whenever there's a new news story about something terrible happening at Rikers, which tends to be what rises to the top in news coverage, right? It's always like, why is it this way? And if you look at Jared's work, especially if you read his book, captives, which he just mentioned, you'll see very clearly that the Coba is willing to defend by any

means necessary any behavior that their personal one I have. And we have the staffing crisis, quote unquote, staffing crisis at Rikers after COVID. And everyone was saying, oh, they're understaffed, understaffed until people started pointing out that no, actually they have the highest or at least one of the highest staffing ratios in the country. They are just abusing their sick leave, pay time off and emergency day policies out the wazoo and the union is defending them on that. Right. And there's more guards than prisoners. Yeah, there's more guards than prisoners. Yeah.

Where's where's Joe to cut that? Wait, there's more guards than prisoners at Rikers? That's unusual, is it not? That's not the case for most prisons. It's normally like one to 20, right? Per prisoner, it's about 1.5 to one for guards to prisoners, yeah. Why is that the case in Rikers

when it is reversed in other prisons? Coba will not allow the downsizing that needs to happen to take place. That's my understanding of the problem. So what causes Koba to behave this way as a union? Is it that, you know, the, the system itself that Rikers is, is so fucked up that I understand why, you know, one look, being a prison guard or a jail guard, not a great job, not great to go work in a jail every day. And you know, I read a number of years ago,

Ted Conover's book, New Jack, no relation by the way, past guest on the show, he worked as a prison guard in Sing Sing for I believe three years, wrote a book about it, wrote about the psychology that you know, you go in there and you feel frightened of the prisoners because you are aware they could attack and kill you. And so a lot of the bad, you know, relations and the bad psychology of prison guards

and his telling is like self-defensive, right? That you're entering a place that you fundamentally find frightening and threatening. And so it's a lot of like bolstering your own defenses. I could imagine why if you're a jail guard, you would say, well, I need the capacity to do whatever I want because I'm in a threatening place. So no one ever should question my use of violence, my use of force or my cruelty. It's like that initial pressure of threat

is, causes people to behave in the same way that why do cops shoot people? It's cause they're terrified of the public, right? That is a sort of fundamental psychological feature of police officers. So is it that or has it become something more malignant with COBOL? I mean, I think there's probably an element of that to it.

I think there's a whole lot of really interesting psychological stakes that you could peel apart in any incarcerated environment or any environment with like an agent of the state that claims the rights to use force up to including lethal force, right? And like regular person, whether they've been turned into a prisoner or not. But you know, like it's impossible to lose face, right?

Like if you're a guard and you want to maintain your position of authority, you really can't afford to lose face at any given moment. And that leads to a lot of things, some of which we document in the book, where like, guards will do things that seem really petty, because it's the only option for them that does not involve, quote unquote, stooping to the inmates level, right? But I think more importantly, to go back to the question here about why the staffing ratio has remained so high. why the staffing ratio has remained so high. I mean, COBOL won't prevent any sort of restructuring because this job has traditionally been a path to the middle class for a large part of New York's working population, working

class population, especially black and brown. But, you know, cite a lot of them in the book to where, especially if you come from an environment like the projects or something, this is a walk in the park. I mean, sure, it's a shitty job, but you know what? I mean, it's the same architects designed a lot of the projects in New York and a lot of the buildings on Rikers, you know, like the tiles and the floor on the same. Wow. So, uh, and it's your own neighbors or inside Rikers, right?

It's people, you know, from the street, whether they're the people, the people you're working alongside as a guard or the people, uh, that are in there as prisoners, like, you know, you're just familiar with kind of the social codes and stuff to some degree, which makes it maybe less shocking. And you know, there's a lot of guards that are former guards that have gone on the record saying like, yeah, I mean, you know, it wasn't the most glamorous job, but it's like, you know, you start at 20. At 20 years, you get a full pension, you retire at 40, you're done. I mean, I wouldn't trade 20 years of my life and that kind of job for anything, but I don't come from poverty like that. So, not really for me to say. I mean, don't become CEOs, kids, is my takeaway,

no matter where you come from, find a better job. Our society has real poverty of imagination when it comes to envisioning new ways we could organize things to make jails and prisons less necessary, right? And this is like one of the main talking points of the abolition movement, right? It's like, well, if we're going to try to move things in this direction, we have to be able to envision them first of all, right?

I mean, I don't think Koba is really doing the, the, the legwork of envisioning a society without jails and prisons when their members jobs hinge on it. You know, and Adam, I think comparing them to cops is, is really smart because, um, like the police and even more than the police, um, they have kind of a social world of their own. That's very cut off from the outside world and has kind of like this siege mentality. Like nobody understands us.

Think about like David Caruso pacing around the bar room in King of New York. Like nobody understands what we have to go through, the violence we go through, people spit on our faces, you know, this really exaggerated kind of victim narrative. But in the case of the guards at Rikers, I mean, there's exaggerated kind of victim narrative. But in the case of the guards at Rikers, I mean, there's a lot of truth to the fact that they are certainly a society apart. Their shift work is incredibly disruptive to anything resembling a social

life. You have rotating shifts for a lot of years before you get like serious seniority. You go from working the night shift to working the day shift to working the night shift and kind of rapid succession, there's mandatory overtime, tons and tons of mandatory overtime. Um, so that you can get, you can get stuck there for more than 24 hours in this really kind of dangerous setting. Um, and you're literally on an island. Wow.

Like it's, I mean, I really want to emphasize that to the listeners, viewers, this is not right. Rikers Island is, it's not a metaphor. This is a real Island. Um, it's connected to the Rhode Island. It's connected to, to Queens by, by a single bridge that's controlled by the guards. Um, and it's ruled in, in, uh, a completely paramilitary fashion. Um, and the way that the guards relate to the prisoners is in a lot of ways, an extension of the way that they relate to each other. Um, a lot of like accounts of guard life, um, I consistently emphasize, uh, violence, intimidation, sexual harassment, um, all kinds of really

nasty people getting tire slash their cars vandalized, spreading awful rumors about each other, fighting each other and uniform. It's just, um, it's an incredibly nasty, violent world, um, among the guards because it's like, think about it. What do you, What are they doing? They're administering the violence of our society. And of course, that's gonna color the way they treat each other.

It's gonna color the way they treat their families, right? If you look at the rates of domestic violence and things like that. And it creates this sense among them that nobody understands us, we're all in this together. And it produces this kind of siege mentality where they view anybody who isn't one of them as the enemy. Wow.

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Well, let's move over the union in a second, but first I want to ask, you know, law enforcement unions or correctional officer unions are a real challenge to the labor movement. I'm obviously a labor guy and you know, the general philosophy of the labor movement is, you know, give the workers power. They have less power. And if they become organized by fighting for what the, they actually need as workers, they'll make the world a better place.

Right. But in this case, we see workers who, my God, we feel empathy, right, for them, because as you say, you know, this is a path to the middle class, a job most people would not want to do, entering a system not of their own making, behaving in a way that is, you know, to protect themselves. Then they have power in the form of a union, and the union is, let's just presume,

is fighting for what the actual correctional officers say that they want if they have a semi-democratic structure. And yet what they end up fighting for is something that worsens conditions for everybody, right? By prolonging the inequity and, you know, the power imbalance and everything else. So it's a case in which, you know, the goals and means of the labor movement seem to lead to an adverse outcome instead of a good outcome. And so what do you make of that as people who, I assume you're sympathetic to most of the labor movement, but you have an up close and personal view of this example, how do

we rectify those two things? How does that make you think about it? Jared will probably have a more detailed response to that. But I am quite simply of the George Orwell opinion that the policeman is the natural enemy of the worker. And CEOs are pretty much the same. I don't think they deserve to have unions. I don't think it makes any sense if you think about what unions are really for to give them

unions for the reasons you just explained, Adam. Oh, your answer is so much better than mine. No, so this is again, this is something that I really spent a lot of time with in captives, because if you look at the history of the New York City Correction Officers Benevolent Association, they originated alongside a bunch of kind of similar city unions. And for a long time, they cooperated with each other. They engaged in what's called pattern bargaining, where one union, the union with the most power typically, will set the tone for the rest of the city. And that it will be implied that it was something like the deal that

the most powerful union God will go to the less powerful unions for a long time in New York, the sanitation workers had the most power because they could stop collecting trash, right? Um, and they certainly, uh, spread around their, um, their power to the, the less powerful unions. Um, but something that happened with the rise of kind of politicized police and corrections unions in the 1960s, and this is something that I've written kind of a lot about, is that police and guards came to see themselves as a special kind of worker who was more important

and more essential to social life than anybody else. And it's like, I do not take it to be manifestly obvious that being able to call a cop who's going to show up in three hours and like, kick his ass is more essential than being able to go to a hospital or go to a school or enjoy a public park and so on and so forth. But the police and the guards have done a very good job of politically aligning with right-wing politicians and publicly promoting this idea that they are the most important public workers that exist. So what happened in the 1970s when New York City was in crisis, like around the fiscal crisis and the inability of the city to kind of fund its great

society programming and things, the correction officers union basically stepped up and said, Uh, the correction officers union basically stepped up and said, screw the rest of these guys, like, keep us, keep us going, uh, keep the police going, right. Um, and we are willing to take on the extra burden that's going to be created by eliminating, uh, public housing, um, health services, right? All of these, all of these city agencies got cut in New York, which led to a higher number of unemployed people, a higher number of people not getting city services,

people who really need all kinds of help, just not getting it. Right. And the cops and the guards kind of assumed the burden of managing, um, the effects of neoliberalism. Right. And so I think that there's actually a history to be told that I'm not the first one to do this, right. My work is heavily indebted to Ruth Wilson, Gilmore, and people in that tradition.

Um, I think you can actually understand, uh, law enforcement unions as the explicit enemy of the rest of the working class in like real structural and historical terms. They have been willing accomplices in dismantling social safety nets, in busting other public sector unions. You see now they all endorse Trump. I'm sure they have no problem with uh, with the federal government getting cut to pieces, as long as it doesn't mess with one of their agencies. And that's just that that's the way it's been, uh, for more than half a century.

Uh, I really appreciate that history and that view, uh, we'll move off of this, but I still think it's a challenge for the labor movement when, you know, a lot of our messaging and in my part of the labor movement when, you know, a lot of our messaging and my part of the labor movement is, Hey, if we organize workers in this way, things will always turn out well, right? That this is like a fundamental good to organize workers for power. And it gets difficult when we say, ah, except for these workers. And I know that you would say, ah, the, well, they're not workers. They're actually a different type of person.

To me, I think it's, you can make that argument. You can't convince everybody of it, you know? And they would say they are workers and they are using the tools that we are making available to all workers of having collective bargaining rights. You know, it's hard to say, well, let's get rid of your collective bargaining rights, but not teachers. Right?

We open ourselves up to a whole bunch of other arguments, you know, cause there's plenty of people who think that teachers are not real workers and should not have unions. And it's just such a profound challenge for the labor movement. And I have not yet heard like, what the fuck we're supposed to do about it

as a movement that I care about it. But I want to, I want, this is a nice brick in the wall for me of helping me figure it out. So let's move on. I wanna go back to, you said gangs, that these facilities, some folks are entitled to cut the line, right? Because they're of their gang membership or that the facility is like ruled by a gang.

Tell me exactly what that means in practice and how does it come about? Well, so the gang housing policy ended a couple of years ago. I can't remember exactly when, maybe 2022. We mentioned in the book, but for a few years before I started my sentence, which was October, 2019, I got out in October, 2020.

So I did, you know, most of my time was during covid. So a few years before sober twenty nineteen the institute this policy of housing people based on gang affiliation. End the same housing unit right so if you were already flagged as a member of the grips or whatever in their in their system. You've been arrested before, maybe you've been a Rikers before. And there were some indications to them that you're involved in gang stuff or maybe you told them so that you wouldn't end up in a housing unit with a lot of members of a rival gang and then have some trouble because they knew that you were in the other gang or whatever. This was kind of the policy for a few years to put gang members all in the same house.

That ended for a number of reasons. There was a pretty sensational piece in the New York Times by Jan Ransom, I think it was called Fight Night and Gang Rule on Rikers Island or something like that. It was claiming that there were reports of like gang members in these gang housing units like forcing non-gang affiliated inmates, also known as neutral inmates, to do like gladiator style fighting for the other's amusement and like bedding.

Yeah, and I'm not saying this sort of thing doesn't happen, right, or didn't happen in this case, like it's entirely possible. I never saw anything like that, but you know, it's possible. But I think it's just as likely that the real problem for the institution, for the Department of Correction, was that the gangs were starting to constitute a real counterbalance to their completely opaque authority, right? So the gangs within their housing unit had some say and could actually use that for social good. And in my experience, did more as often as not, right?

Like I had a lot of gang members that made my life easier in Rikers. You know, for the record, I'm not in a gang. Don't blame me. Um, but like, you know, it wasn't all like, oh, the gang members are the worst ones. Right? Like the gang members were often, uh, cause I lived in gang houses and neutral houses where you have, you know, sometimes a power structure sometimes is much more horizontal when there is a power structure in a neutral house just a couple of guys that are not affiliated with the gang that is trying to keep the wheels on the bus or whatever. Where's on the bus is that a thing we say whatever i'm sure yeah like the gangs often provided quite a bit of collective power to the folks living in the housing unit, right?

And that's no longer the case. People are no longer housed based on gang affiliation, to my understanding, on records. But yeah, and sometimes it's not, you know, not making anybody's life easier except theirs. I mean, I lived in a dorm at one point where there were. What twenty five guys who are five phones and for the phones were claimed for exclusive use by the blood right there's a blood house right. So and they were like i think five bloods in the house right so you got four phones for five dudes the other twenty of you. Fuck off and wait for your turn on the one free phone the one neutral phone right that's no fun. When a bunch of dudes cut you in line, just because like, fuck are you going to do about it? Me and my homies run this dorm. Like, that's no fun.

At the end of the day, you know, you're probably going to get a portion. So it's fine, you know, but it just, you know, it it it. I think it really is, especially as Americans, when we grow up in this culture, this steeped in all this rhetoric about like and sort of egalitarian values and stuff, it really like punches you in the gut. You know, on some level rhetoric of about like, and sort of egalitarian values and stuff. It really like punches you in the gut, you know, on some level it's like, it doesn't seem right. You know?

Um, but sometimes it's not, it's not really nice to, to, to be living under gang rule, but at other times it, it constituted a real collective power. And I think that was scary to the institution on some level. Well, this makes sense in that, you know, what are gangs in an area where there is not a lot of social organization. It's an alternative form of social organization that springs up organically. You know, there's no, if there's no, uh, no union to join, no church to join, no whatever, no group that allows you to have power in your world.

Like people naturally form themselves into social hierarchies. And that's always been my understanding of how gangs form in the outside world. Makes even more sense in a prison where you're all close to, or in a jail where you're all close together. There is no real social organization being imposed on you from the top, from the jail itself. So of course people would organize themselves into these groups. And of course some of that social organization would be positive,

even as some would be negative, right? Because it's serving a purpose. It's serving a purpose. And just to clarify, a lot of these, most of these, in my experience, are coming from outside. These people are already getting affiliated when they arrive at Rikers, right? And they're able to recognize each other through the exchange of like code words and secret handshakes and stuff like that upon arrival in Rikers and reconstitute, if we can maybe say it that way, a gang, right?

Even though they don't know each other. And within any given gang, there are different sets and subsets. And that's kind of your local crew, maybe a sort of like pretty broad, but pretty loosely affiliated network, or it may just be like the dudes, you know, in your project building or on your block or whatever right but you may well not know any of the other bloods in your house but you're able to identify each other as bloods and that sort of like gang solidarity is is pretty fundamental to making things run and to not losing your status as a gang member there are some exceptions i saw

sometimes when when gang members were willing to buck gang solidarity because like, again, the stakes are pretty low in city time for people serving sentences on Rikers. It's like, let me see the street again soon. Um, you know, I'm maybe not going to go all in on every little thing, right? Uh, gang members in greens, which is the term we use on Rikers. If you're serving a sentence, a city time sentence, you're wearing forest green. And if you're detained pretrial, you're wearing like a beige tan outfit. So if you're in greens, you know, gang members are pretty much like inactive, is what I was told.

You know, you're pretty much exempt from most of your gang duties because everyone understands that, you know, as people often say, ain't nobody on that kind of time like we're not at Sing Sing here. Right. We're all going to get out pretty soon. Um, but there's, there's, there's a limit to that. I mean, you have to, you know, adhere to gang solidarity in most cases, if you're in a gang. So it sounds like if you're the person running Rikers, right.

You're looking at the gangs going, okay, well, maybe I should keep them segregated because then they won't fight, but then also they'll provide some amount of social regularity, right? Like the social structure, they'll do some shit so I don't have to do it. But then as you say, eventually the gangs become so powerful, you're like, oh wait, this is maybe more powerful exceeding my authority. And so then you try to break them up. Um, and, and I understand how then it becomes something that the institution ends up licensing

and managing almost rather than stamping it out. Because I think most people's first thought is why do gangs exist at all in prison? Why would they allow, you know, allow it to happen? But it, your description makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Guards, a lot of guards rely on the gangs to do their job, basically. We should have said this earlier, but when we talk about city time and the facilities that we were in, these are large dormitories. These big open rooms with just beds. No privacy, and I regret not saying this at the beginning.

No, not a lot of privacy, nowhere to get away. Nope. Um, and so a lot of guards like would, you know, at the lowest end of the workforce, like the absolute shit tier of the guard hierarchy, like they're the ones who have to go in there and deal with the prisoners. A lot of them would just assume not and not walk around in there and not have to do anything. And I think a lot of guards kind of rely on, they call it running the dorm.

Like the guards call it this running the dorm where they'll deputize a couple of the most powerful prisoners to just kind of keep the plate, keep a lid on the place. It makes, we'll use that term too, running the dorm. Um, but I think it means sometimes very different things for them. It just often means like we're, we're the, you know, the top dog here, you know? Yeah. You can forget who you're the top dog on the behalf of, but I think David had a really interesting, um, kind of experience where, so it's like these,

the, the, the gangs in the dormitory,itory hierarchy, you know, I'll confess, I found it just, just all so offensive. You know, it's like the, the regulating the telephones. I was like, Oh, I just kept telling myself, you know, this is the kind of shit that people with absolutely no social power think is really important. And this is not my world. And so I'm not going to fight with some guy who's like so proud that he controls a pay phone that no one else can use.

Like who the fuck wants to use a pay phone anyway? So like, I, like, I, I found the whole thing just like, so just politically and personally offensive, but David had a really good experience in a way where like this, the structure can actually be used against the institution. Which is when, when they went on strike during COVID, and not only got a bunch of PPE, but also ended up getting a ton of people released. Do you want to say something about that, man? Wait, that sounds a bit, why didn't we open with that? Yeah, tell me about it. It's not the focus of the book, but yeah, we, well, I mean, conditions during

records were pretty bad as a lot of coverage of what was then referred to as the epicenter of the epicenter for a while. Um, and you know, at a certain point we, we just decided that we weren't going to go to the institutional meals, the chow, and we weren't going to go to work. Um, until, uh, and we weren't going to go to work until some of our demands were met. Demands included things like cleaning supplies, which we had run out of a few days prior, which they had refused to replace just because, you know, it's like the toilet paper thing we were talking about at the top. Whatever, you don't tell

me what to do. This place sucks. What's it going to change, you know, you know, and PPE and the release of as many prisoners as possible. And we actually won. We got cleaning supplies and PPE later that day. And then I think almost two days later, they started releasing people en masse overnight. And ultimately about about 1200 people released, it's a little less than a quarter of the island's population at time. It was three quarters of the sentenced population. So in my dorm, for example, overnight, we went from being a 50 bed dorms, 48 bed dorm that was full of that capacity down to a 48 bed dorm with 12 people. Wow. That must have felt luxurious.

Oh, it was insane. I mean, it was also heartbreaking because I wanted to fucking go home like everyone else. But yeah, I wasn't released because I'm too dangerous. By the way, when you think of violent felons, think of me. That's a joke, but also entirely serious. It's a whole other discussion though. But yeah, so I wasn't approved for release

despite, uh, a lot of people's best efforts. I mean, they were actually calling campaigns and stuff. Uh, to try to get me particularly out and the DA just didn't want to admit that they like should never have locked me up in the first place, like a lot of people. Um, but, but yeah, everyone went home and left all their stuff. So like we were all sleeping on three mattresses. Uh, you know, we all had acquired all the commissary goods that everyone else had bought because they don't need them and, and who actually gave you

their stuff was a sort of social status signifier, you know, I had one of the shot callers in the Crips who helped us organize the strike, um, came up to me with his bin and just gave me, you know, like a stack of, of the standard issue plastic, uh, rubber made Tupperware storage bins that you put all your stuff in. And, you know, I mean, it was just incredibly luxurious. There was so much stuff in there. I mean, a lot of it, I couldn't use, like there was, there were multiple like blue do rags that, you know, I didn't have any use for, you know,

but the word that comes back to mind is solidarity, um, that, that you guys showed solidarity in that moment and, uh, actually extracted concessions from the institution. That's remarkable. Yeah. Pretty, pretty concrete, um, pretty concrete concessions. Um, I, I want to specify that this sort of thing on Rikers is generally known as sticking it up or a stick up, you know?

Um, and, and stick ups happen all the time. I mean, all the time, they just don't generally make it out to the outside world, let alone to the outside, like media. And when they are, they're generally not framed in the language of activism, just because most people that are incarcerated still have that framework, like, you know, have the vocabulary, they don't conceive of things in the same way that someone who's been in activist circles does. And I was not like the most involved activist dude in New York when I got arrested, right? It's just that I'd been kind of around this sort of world on and off here and there for years and I'm familiar with that sort of language and the basic process, right?

We're going to do this thing until these demands are met and in order for those demands to be met, you need to provide the people you're making demands of with a list of demands, right? Like that's very simple. And for a lot of guys on Rikers, it was more just like, well, this isn't right. We're not gonna go along with it until you fix it, right? So because being an atypical prisoner,

I had, you know, I just like, I know people who are journalists, I know people who are activists, and I was able to call them, you know, and communicate our list of demands to them. They were then able to really raise the temperature on this strike, right, by shouting that out far and wide. But these things happen all the time.

And it was something that was organized, at least in my dorm, non-hierarchically. So purely horizontally, or as purely horizontal as it can be wow consensus, right? Solidarity and consensus were the guiding principles It's not like I'm like the college educated white dude who came in and was like listen up folks Here's how we're gonna knock this system on its ass, right? Like this this was something that I took my cue from other people on and when I saw that this was really gonna tip over And to the realm of reality I was like cool So listen, here's a few things that maybe we could do to tighten this up, right? And if we can get these down on paper, I'll call a friend right away who will make sure this get out, right?

In the dorm across the hall, the strike fell into place hierarchically to my understanding through the gang leadership. I had been in a housing unit with actually the Crip guy who gave me all of his stuff when he went home previously. And, you know, we've been transferred to different units across the hall and he was the guy running his housing unit. I approached him in the lunchroom and told him we were thinking about going on strike and he said without hesitation, yeah, we're on board. And to my understanding, I think he told everyone in that dorm, like, we're on strike now. If you break ranks, then like that'll be a problem. You know, so that's a little less like consensus based to say the least, but you know, they were able to make that happen.

Um, you know, and, and, and again, it worked out. I mean, it's not always the case, but like, um, you know, these, these things really do happen quite frequently on record, they just really, really make it out. And they're really framed or they're really covered or framed in a way that is easily understandable to people that come from the worlds that we come from. To me, it really shows that organizing to put pressure on a system is something that like humans have the natural capacity to do. Like this happened pretty organically.

It sounds like even if you hadn't been there, right, you, you had a little bit of knowledge you brought in from your activist sphere, would have happened anyway. Like the folks in Rikers knew where their power was and they knew how to organize it and they were able to do so, which is, again, it's a very positive story about humanity. It's a story about like solidarity is a natural part of who we are.

Uh, are you in touch with anybody who you got to know there now? Oh yeah. Uh, yeah, I got a fair number of friends. I met on Rikers, um, some, some closer than others, but yeah, I had a couple come out to our, our, uh, first, um, book tour events at the center for Brooklyn history in New York, they were thrilled to be there. They were thrilled to get copies of the book. Um, you know, I got a couple of guys that I get together with, uh, when I'm back in New York, I don't live in New York. They were thrilled to be there. They were thrilled to get copies of the book.

You know, I got a couple guys that I get together with when I'm back in New York. I don't live in New York anymore, but when I come back, we'll get together. You know, we'll get something to eat. We'll get a drink. We'll just hang out. A lot of guys I just kind of text with.

And then I write to, you know, currently incarcerated political prisoners. So I'm still kind of involved in, in prisoner stuff or former prisoner stuff. I mean, I'm a former prisoner myself, right? That's, that's the status you keep for life. So, um, do you guys have any view on what the future of Rikers is? I know that it's, it's constantly being talked about shutting down or the

feds taking it over, et cetera. And beyond that, uh, look, we've gone through a conversation in this country about criminal justice reform, where unfortunately the backlash has outstripped the initial movement in my feeling, you know, that prison reform is not something that is being talked about. The end of mass incarceration is seeming further away

than it did 10 years ago to me. So what do you see is the future of that movement in this country based on your firsthand experience? I mean, I became an abolitionist by serving time on Rikers, right? Like I generally identified it as an anarchist or like libertarian socialist somewhere in there before serving time.

And abolition of jails and prisons is a plank of that just because it's a very hierarchical authoritarian way, right? To organize societies by incarcerating people and telling them you can't leave. But I had never really thought about it in any great detail. And as I read up on the history of mass incarceration, the history of Rikers, part of the theoretical nuts and bolts of, you know, how incarceration works in the modern era and abolition, I came more to understand that prison reform, uh, is what gave us the prison, right?

Like, uh, this is essentially a humanist measure that has gone wrong. And all the prison reforms we've since seen, uh, sometimes have, have nice short-term goals that don't serve to dismantle the institution, like making life objectively more comfortable for prisoners, which it's very hard to argue against, right? But that does not serve, like we're kidding ourselves if we if we convince ourselves that it serves the purpose of dismantling the cross-rural system. In terms of Rikers, I think Jared will have more to say. He's literally writing the book on that question now, but I'll just say that I

don't think the new jails, the new borough based jails are the solution. I don't think there's any guarantee that they'll close Rikers once they build them or that they will not expand those once they build them. And in fact, I'm sure the opposite will happen. And a federal receivership like couldn't hurt, but probably won't save the day. There's a federal facility that has been found in dire watch of all the standards that the feds are supposed to be enforcing just down the road in Brooklyn, MDC, where our board Luigi is currently spending time. Free Luigi.

Yeah, so I've actually like this came in the mail yesterday so I can promote it. out March 11th on Haymarket called skyscraper jails. Um, and it tells the story of how the campaign to close down Rikers, uh, turned into a campaign to build these literal skyscraper juggernaut jails throughout New York city. Um, and to my mind, it's a real cautionary tale because it would be easy to say that the people who designed the skyscraper jails are evil, or they're liars, or they're racist or something. But I've met a lot of these people. Like the people you meet at Rikers, they're shockingly normal.

Just like you and me. But what they have done is they have operated on the wager that you can solve the problem of incarceration with new and better carceral infrastructure. And unfortunately that has been, uh, basically the, the tragedy of prison reform since like, as, as David was saying, since the, the birth of the very birth of the prison, I feel like it's, it's definitely like, it feels like a chilly moment to be an anti-prison activist. It's funny, Skyscraper Jails, that's the book that me and Jonna have coming out. The real villains in the story are these kinds of progressive liberals. Um, and it's, uh, we wrote the book during the Biden administration, right?

And now it's just, it feels a little silly to be coming out with this double barrel, the salt on like people who listen to NPR and, you know, probably donate to green peace or whatever. But I think that there is, uh, there is an enduring lesson that, um, even when There is a there is an enduring lesson that even when things feel so hopeless like now, any kind of compromise with a car show expansion any kind of compromise with law and order is always self defeating in the long term. This like so you know sometimes all you can do is just stay true tree of principles and just keep fighting for them and the wager that i've always operated under is that. The vast majority of people in america and in the world wanna live in a society where they have power over the conditions of their life are they able to live in a dignified way. Um, and if other people can enjoy that, then that's great too.

Uh, and you know, as political, as a political organizer, your job is to kind of help create the possibility for that situation. And so I think that we're just say, it's really the same as it was five, 10 years ago, we're just going through this real rough patch right now, but I really hope that people don't, this is not the, the, the Ascension of Trump, the Ascension of Eric Adams. This is not the cause to give up on basic humanistic principles. Um, and the belief that we can build a world where everybody can be free. That is a beautiful note to end on.

Uh, thank you so much for being here, Jared and David, and thank you for giving us a window into a part of society that has kept close to us specifically and purposefully so long. Thank you for giving us a window into a part of society that has kept close to us specifically and purposefully so long. It's really invaluable work and you illuminate a lot for me. Thanks so much for being here. The book again is called City Time. Folks can pick up a copy at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books, which supports

not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. Where else can people find your work online? We'll start with David. Well, I've been published in a bunch of different articles so you can find them around. If you're interested in this, like Slate happened to post, truth out, the appeal, whatever. If you're interested in the strike,

the piece is called Stick Up on Rikers Island. It's available on Hardcrackers.com. I'm on Twitter, I'm not really on there, but it's at AB underscore DAC and I'm on Patreon at David Campbell DAC. If you want to support my work writing about anti-fascism and incarceration. Amazing. So I have a website, JaredShanehan.com. You can also find, I've got a couple of books on this and related topics topics I encourage you to buy

them through Pilsen Community Books PIL SEN community books it's a workroom bookstore in my city Chicago what's up PCB hope everybody supports you Jared and David thank you so much for being on the show guys thanks Adam it's a real pleasure well thank you once again to David and Jared for coming on the show I can't thank them enough and I can't thank you once again to David and Jared for coming on the show. I can't thank them enough, and I can't thank you enough for supporting the show. If you want to join our ranks as supporters, head to Patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this podcast ad free, and you will be supporting the wonderful conversations we bring you with experts, journalists, scholars, political thinkers,

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