Today, Explained - The Rikers takeover

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Today a federal judge hears arguments on whether New York City Mayor Eric Adams should be stripped of control of the jails on Rikers Island. Gothamist’s Matt Katz explains. This episode was produced by Siona Peterous, edited by Matt Collette with help from Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by David Herman with help from Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Someone somewhere once said that New York City is the greatest city in the world. Someone somewhere else once said that the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. And if we're judging New York City by Rikers Island, we've got some issues. Turned out to be the deadliest year for overdoses at Rikers in a decade. 26 people in custody or very recently released from custody have died. You would be beat up and be in a cell and be dead and nobody would know. That's scary.

We've talked about the deplorable conditions at Rikers jails before on Today Explained. It was two years ago and people keep dying there. But now there's an opportunity for improvement. Today, a federal judge hears arguments to strip control of Rikers from New York City and its mayor, Eric Adams. A federal takeover of Rikers Island, coming up on the show. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs.

And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. Today Explained, Sean Ramos from. We wanted to talk about Rikers and what it says about incarceration in America. So we reached out to Matt Katz, who covers the jails on the island for Gothamist. So much Rikers news going on right now, Sean. There is a big hearing this week where a federal judge for the very first time will consider a federal takeover of the city jails in New York City.

The second biggest jail system in the country, long plagued by a slew of problems, particularly violence. It seems as if violence is the only thing that people respect. You could be beat up and be in that cell and be dead and nobody would know. That's scary. In the last just few weeks, there's been just a growing call, more momentum for a takeover of the jail system. In other words, wresting control of all decision-making processes when it comes to incarceration in New York City and taking all that away from the mayor's administration and giving it to an all-powerful federal receiver. A federal monitor appointed to oversee the city's jails is urging a judge to hold the Department of Correction and its commissioner in contempt for failing to make safety improvements.

There's currently about 6,000 detainees. That number's been increasing. But there's been a longstanding humanitarian crisis going on in Rikers Island, which is where almost all of the jails in New York City are. It's really accelerated over the last several weeks and months. The federal monitor who oversees Rikers Island is now criticizing in court Correction Commissioner Louis Molina over the handling of five incidents in city jails in May, five incidents this month alone, that the monitor says are representative of a larger trend. Do we know what a takeover would entail? We don't know exactly.

We know, generally speaking, what those who want to take over say of federal receiver, which would be the name of this all-powerful figure who takes over on behalf of the feds. We know what they might be able to do. So they can spend the billions of dollars the corrections department has and spend it as they see fit. They can hire and fire staff and likely be able to avoid union contracts that might restrict the firing of some people. They might be able to appoint new leaders of the jails without going through some of the longstanding city bureaucracy and city work rules that, you know, limit who you can hire. They also might be able to do smaller things.

I reported a few weeks ago that for unclear reasons, the correction department is spending almost $100,000 on submachine guns. What? I found the order for this in the city record. And that is strange in large part because you're not even allowed to have a gun working at Rikers Island. So, you know, theoretically, a federal receiver could say,

you know what, we're not spending $90,000 in high-powered submachine guns. For example, the correction department just cut $17 million in job training and social services for people at Rikers. So a federal receiver could say, you know what, we're going to spend city tax dollars on this thing that city officials before didn't want to spend money on. I hear a difference in the decision-making process for how big decisions for how the jails are run are made and also the spending processes. And the question, though, of course, is whether it changes the culture of Rikers Island. But I think we would see some high-level changes. Let's talk about how we got here. I mean, we covered the issues at Rikers

about two years ago on this show when it seemed like things couldn't get any worse. The chief medical officer on Rikers wrote a letter a couple weeks ago to the city council saying, in effect, that the city was no longer able to guarantee the safety of the people it was holding there. And basically calling it a humanitarian crisis that needed dramatic action to resolve. But they sound like they even got worse from there. When exactly do the problems on Rikers Island begin? Is it when they put a jail there? You talk to some people and they say Rikers Island is just a reflection of the

mass incarceration problem that the United States has had for decades. But there have been longstanding issues since the jails have operated there. I mean, it is a massive complex. It's on a island that is only accessible by a bridge. There's difficulties, you know, moving people through the court system, getting people to court. So people languish there for longer than they necessarily need to. Remember, almost everybody there has not been convicted of a crime. They're all just facing charges and they're awaiting their hearings. It takes a long time to get to the infirmary. It takes a long time for officers to respond to emergencies.

Did you get medical care when you needed it? Barely. It was an incident where I had needed stitches and I did not receive stitches. There's issues with the physical plant. And then, you know, there's been accelerated problems in recent years, particularly during COVID. It is in the middle of a pandemic. We saw people that didn't have access to showers, didn't have access to food, didn't have access to PPE or clean clothes. And then last year was the highest death rate at Rikers in more than a quarter century.

Deaths on Rikers Island have become a common occurrence. In 2021 and 2022, 26 people in custody or very recently released from custody have died. Every few weeks we're hearing about another death at Rikers Island from a range of things, you know, medical issues and officers either not taking somebody to the infirmary, not responding to a medical incident when somebody was having one. There's been an issue with fentanyl getting into the jails and people overdosing. Turned out to be the deadliest year for overdoses at Rikers in a decade, in no small part because of fentanyl. And the big question, how are the daily deadly drugs even getting into the jail? And there's been suicides.

Elected officials are speaking out after an unannounced visit to Rikers Island. It comes after another inmate committed suicide over the weekend. You know, the deaths really became something that I think the public could pay attention to, more so than, you know, just another slashing or stabbing in the jails. Hundreds honored the 18 lives that were lost while in custody behind bars at Rikers this year. This was something that the media in New York and politicians in New York started talking about more frequently and more aggressively. And I think that's really what led us up to this point where there's consideration of a total takeover of the jails. There's been a federal monitor who was appointed almost eight years ago to oversee Rikers Island.

And I've read way too many of the monitor's very, very long reports. And through the years, the monitor has seemed to go out of his way to, you know, give the city as much credit as he can. Things are tough there, but the city's trying. The city says they're going to implement this reform. I think that's going to be good. The tone of the monitor, whose name is Steve Martin, changed entirely this spring and summer. Mayor Eric Adams had implemented an action plan to reform the city's jails a year ago, and the monitor in the summer said that the action plan had essentially failed. The pace of reform has stagnated instead of accelerated in a number of key areas, meaning that there has been no meaningful relief for people in custody or

staff from the violence and the unnecessary and excessive use of force. He said that the correction department stopped giving him information, that they appeared to be hiding information, including about deaths and what led to deaths and not reporting deaths promptly. He noted that every safety and violence indicator is substantially higher from when the monitor was installed eight years ago. Officers' use of force skyrocketed 127%. The number of people sustaining serious injuries skyrocketed from 74 in 2016 to 434 last year. These are people sustaining serious injuries because of violence in the jails. Once he came out and made these allegations, he also started describing

incidents in the jails that are even shocking for Riker standards. He described five violent incidents that left two detainees dead, one paralyzed, one hospitalized in critical condition with fractured ribs. And that man was left naked and alone for at least three hours after he was assaulted. Officers basically ignored him. He described an incident in which a detainee ran out of an elevator at Rikers Island. So staff took him down. He was bleeding. They put him in rear cuffs and leg restraints. And then while being held by the

staff, his head banged on two things that were like on the ground and the concrete floor. And that paralyzed him from the neck down. There was an incident in which a man died by suicide and DOC, the Department of Correction, had not reported the incident to the monitor, which they're required to do. Also an incident in which the city had said somebody had a pre-existing medical condition and died of some sort of heart failure. It turned out he had actually died of a fractured skull, which calls into question

what led to the fractured skull, of course. And then finally, there was a detainee in his 80s considered cognitively impaired, didn't understand English. His arms were pulled and twisted after he refused to go into a holding pen, rear cuffed and locked in a cell alone without a toilet for four hours and ended up in the ICU. This was literally just a snapshot of a couple of weeks on Rikers Island. And the federal monitor, who's been there for eight years, had enough. These incidents raise serious concerns about the management of individuals' new admission intake and the department's ability and commitment to ensure safety and to provide adequate supervision,

timely medical care, and accurate reporting. Are people in New York City confident that bringing in the federal government can fix Rikers? I think that probably depends on how people feel about the mayor. If people are supportive of Mayor Adams and think that he's somebody who knows how to get things done, then they probably don't want a federal receiver. I am the best person in this administration to finally turn around the Department of Correction. But I think many New Yorkers have heard too many horror stories from Rikers Island for too many decades

that they would like somebody with more power to come in and fix things. For many people, it's a stain on the city, right? I mean, you have what is supposed to be a world-class city, and you have a physically decrepit and by humanitarian standards, a absolutely substandard jail system. Is there a day, you think, where New Yorkers will no longer need to hear about humanitarian crises and suicides and brutal beatings and deaths at this jail where most of the incarcerated people haven't even yet been tried for a crime? That's supposed to happen four years from now because city law mandates that Rikers

Island actually close in 2027. But the current mayor has questioned whether that actually can happen by 2027. We're going to take a quick break and we got more with Matt Katz in a minute on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained. Ramp.com slash explained.

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19-plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Today Explained is back with Matt Katz of WNYC Radio in New York City and Gothmist. Matt, you mentioned that all these problems at Rikers could one day conclude with Rikers shutting down in 2027. How did that plan come to be? The plan came to be under the previous mayor, Mayor de Blasio, several years ago and the city council to make this happen, to close Rikers by 2027 and replace them with

these four smaller jails. In Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens, each facility would be in close proximity to the courthouse. The goal is to create a safer alternative to Rikers Island and have inmates closer to their families and attorneys. But now there's a lot of questions about whether that actually can happen because under the current mayor, there's been more arrests. There's been a more aggressive law enforcement Rikers can only hold about 3,400 people. So it is unclear how this is going to happen. So New York approves a plan to shut down Rikers.

And now it looks like New York City might not be able to fulfill its own plan to shut down Rikers. What happens if the city fails here? It's a potential looming mess. The possibility of a federal takeover is interesting in that it might both give power to somebody who can make some changes necessary in order to close Rikers, but it also might mean that there's no other authority to appeal to if Rikers doesn't close, right? I mean, if there's a federal receiver who's running the place and there's too many people to incarcerate in those four smaller jails, then what can be done? So it sounds like you're kind of doomed either way. You're doomed to keep this jail open or to move people to other jails and worsen conditions there. And you have a humanitarian crisis either way.

Or you change your policies toward incarceration. people at Rikers Island Health Retrial are diagnosed with a mental illness and about a quarter have a serious mental illness. And you hear activists, reformers say that the city and state, for less money, could provide, for example, supportive housing for certain mentally ill alleged offenders. So supportive housing meaning you're provided a place to live, a safe place to live, and services in conjunction with your home. So drug rehabilitation services, mental health counseling, assistance, getting public assistance. These are ideas in order to dramatically reduce the population of Rikers.

If 50% are suffering from mental illness, is a jail the right place for them? Is that what's best for public safety? These are important questions. Or is a jail only gonna make them worse and cycle them out of the system back onto the streets where they are less able to take care of themselves and to not pose a threat to others you're saying the best option on the table

here right now because the new york city penal system is stuck between a rock and a hard place is to rethink incarceration altogether either rethink incarceration altogether or build more and more jails to hold the more and more people that are being held there. Which feels more likely to you? The former option in terms of like finding a new way of dealing with people who are suffering from mental illness, who have contact with the criminal justice system, that's a lot harder and requires a lot more buy-in from a wide swath of the political establishment. And right now, the current mayor, that's just not his philosophical approach. He's a former NYPD police officer who sees jails as a place to hold dangerous people in order to

prevent them from committing crimes on the street. But, you know, reformers point to the things that happen every day at Rikers Island, saying that, you know, public safety, it's also the safety of the individuals who have not been convicted of crimes that are held in these jails every day. I mean, just in the last few days, as I'm talking to you, the Federal Monitor issued one of his many reports and described a situation where Rikers officers were overheard on body-worn cameras, quote, bragging about beating up a detainee who was being held in a mental observation unit. And the officer is heard saying, I'm going to fuck you up again. Officer No. 1 then exited the day room and continued to stand near the person in custody and verbally antagonized him on and off for over 10 minutes before the individual was removed from the area. Reformers would say that person's only going to cycle back through the system, and that's not going to make anybody safe. So a whole rethinking of how we approach incarceration is what people say is called for here, but it is politically

a hell of a lot harder. But there's no chance Mayor Eric Adams wants to rethink incarceration in New York City right now. Is there a chance that this federal takeover of Rikers Island could lead to reforms? There's a chance, but it's A, going to take a while to get there. We're now having hearings to consider this, but a decision on appointing a federal receiver wouldn't happen earliest next year. And then there will likely be legal challenges, particularly from the correction officers union

who see such takeover as a threat to their members and to their sway over the correction department and getting work rules in their members' favor. So let's say a federal receiver comes in in a year and starts making changes, but can the federal receiver make changes to who gets incarcerated? Unlikely. Such a process would have to happen in conjunction with the courts and the city council. And so you can see an improvement, I think, under a federal receiver, potentially, in terms of the conditions at Rikers Island. But whether or not a federal receiver can move us closer to lowering the population of detainees there in order to close the place by 2027, that's going to be very tough and require a lot of other forces in conjunction with a federal take over. There is no question that it's not just detainees who were traumatized at Rikers Island, but the people who work there. The officers who tell us they get spit on and sexually assaulted

and slashed in the face with knives and shivs on a daily basis. They're also traumatized. The communities that the detainees leave for months and years on end, their families, their children are traumatized. And then, you know, people walking through the bodega and seeing another headline of another death on the cover of the New York Daily News. They're getting some of that trauma downstream, too. I mean, this is how the richest country on Earth deals with its most difficult and vulnerable people.

And I don't think that's healthy for anybody, particularly the individuals involved, but also for the rest of us. Matt Katz reports on incarceration, public safety, and Rikers Island for Gothamist and WNYC Public Radio in New York City. You can find his reporting at gothamist.com. Our show today was produced by Siona Petros. She had help from Matthew Collette, Amina Alsadi, Laura Bullard, Patrick Boyd, and New York City's finest, David Herman. And thanks to Darren Mack from the Freedom Agenda for his help as well.

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