Now it's time for our daily Bloomberg Law Brief, exploring legal issues in the news. Today, Bloomberg Law host June Grossoe discusses New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to shut down the prison complex on Rikers Island. She speaks to Michael Mushlin, a professor at Pace University Law School, and Jonathan Blank's, a researcher at the Keto Institute. Let's begin with both of your reactions to do Blasio's plan. I think his plan is correctly identifies a lot of
the problems with Rikers and jail's generally. It's not a perfect plan, but the goals, the goals that he lifted to, you know, find different ways to reduce the number of people that are going to be in there in the first place, is very laudable. Um. I think one of the things that isn't quite mentioned in the plan, but I think people need to think about, is do you think a cage as a remedy to social wills is not necessarily the best thing? It should be the last, uh,
the last remedy uh for people who commit crimes. If people can be released on their own recognizance, as the people are. That's good, but there's still a very large population there that are subject to these abuses, and I think finding more and better ways, some of which were outlined in his plan are, is a very good step forward. The plan calls for reducing the inmate population down to five thousand. New York City had a record low crime rate last year. So Michael, how will that be done? Well?
First of all, I think that it's important to point out that most of the people on Rikers Island have not been convicted of any crime. They're they're being held while awaiting trial. It's also important to note that that way, that's that over two thirds of them only spent about
thirty days in Rikers Island. So the notion of this is we're not talking about a prison where people have been convicted and and they're being sent to They're being sent to prison for rehabilitations or punishment for for for safety of the community. So that's one thing to talk about. And so really the way so and that short period of time that so many people spend there may not seem that significant, but it's a highly disruptive, it's highly expensive,
and we're punishing people who haven't been convicted. That's Michael motion And, a professor at Pace University Law School, and Jonathan Blanks, a researcher at the Cato Institute, speaking to Bloomberg lawhost in Grosso And. You can listen to Bloomberg Law week days at one pm all street time here on Bloomberg Radio Now. Among the top legal stories from Bloomberg Law, The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court
to overturn a ruling involving Microsoft and emails. Last July, and Appeals Court decided Microsoft would not be forced to turn over emails stored in Ireland that the US wants for a drug investigation. The government maintains that would create a legal loophole to be exploited by criminals. Microsoft argues that if it is forced to produce the emails, other countries could force companies to turn over evidence stored in
the US. And that's this morning's Bloomberg Lab Brief. You can find more legal news at Bloomberg Law dot com and Bloomberg b NA dot com. Attorneys will find exceptional legal research and business development tools there as well. Visit Bloomberg Law dot com and Bloomberg b NA dot com for more information,