DeBlasio Reveals Plans to Shut Infamous Rikers Prison (Audio)

The city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to improve conditions at Rikers to no avail now. After increasing public and political pressure to close down Rikers, New York City Mayor Bill Deblasio has come out with a plan to shut the jail down over a ten year span, but there are a lot of ifs to making it work. My guests are Michael Mushlin, professor at Pace University Law School, and Jonathan Blanks, a researcher at the Cato Institute. Let's

begin with both of your reactions to de Blasio's plan. Michael, why don't you start? Sure? Well, I think it's a very sensible plan that I think is in the interests of all New Yorkers. Rikers Island really has become a notorious place. I called it an OpEd I wrote recently, a devil's island. Uh. It's isolated, it's violent, it's it's it's wasteful. And I think the decision to close it, while it's very difficult to accomplishes, a very sensible one,

and I think it will benefit all of us. And I think the mayor's responding to a report of a commission that studied this subject for a while, and that that was head but headed by the Chief Judge of the New York State, the ex Chief Judge of the retired Chief Judge of New York State that recommended this, and um and uh, I think it's a uh. I applaud the mayor for endorsing the report of the Litman report. All right, Jonathan, what's your reaction. I too was impressed

with the report. I think his plan is it 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 using a cage as a remedy to socialis

is not necessarily the best thing. It should be the last uh, the last remedy to 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 rehabilitation, for 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. Um. So it's really important to try to figure out smart ways to reduce that that um that population, and it can be done. There really are three basic techniques that we've already begun to implement and that have led to a significant reduction. At its height, there were twenty thousand people that were held on Rikers Island about twenty years ago and now we're down to about ten thousand, and this plan is to

reduce it to five thousand. And the way to do that is to is to come up with alternatives to bail, to reform the bails system, to figure out rather than putting a dollar amount on who who goes to prison, who goes to I'm sorry, who goes to jail, and who goes to Rikers Island to make assessments, realistic assessments of really who is going to need to be detained

rather than just put a number on it. You know that the number is usually around two thousand dollars, and if a person has that two thousand dollars, they buy their way out. That that really doesn't make sense in two ways. There are people that can't afford the two

thousand dollars and then they go to prison. They go to jail essentially because they're poor, or there are people there's some people for whom we don't really we don't We don't want them to buy their way out because they're either not going to come back to trial or

because maybe they posed a thread. I've been talking with Michael Mushlin, professor at Pace University Law School, and Jonathan Blanks, are researcher at the Cato Institute about New York City Mayor Build Blasio's plan to shut down Rikers Island Prison over a ten year spam and there are a lot

of ifs involved in this. Jonathan. An independent commission created by the City Council that we were talking about before, call for state law reforms such as reclassifying criminal offenses such as fair evasion, marijuana possession in public you and gravity knives as civil offenses bill. The mayor has not said has not approved that. Is that something that we

should be thinking about. Yeah, I mean, if you're going to think about changing in jail policy, you also have to think of the inputs enough going to be policing policy. So when the police are out there giving summons is or making arrests for whatever it is, you know, they if they continue to use the criminal law to move them into jail, that's just going There's nothing uh rockers can do about that if they have to take them in.

So making these civil offenses can reduce the jail population, reduce the stress on trying to find places to house these people. And Michael, is this really then a plan

for criminal justice reform as well? Well? I I think it is, and I think we could even make it more so Actually, um um, when way I think we could really make it much more comprehensive is if we use if we use the land that is available on Rikers Island two to bring back people who are serving prison sentences in far flung places in New York State, of New York State, New York City people who are sentenced to prison are sentenced two hundred miles away from

New York. Many of those people are parents. There's a hundred and five thousand children who have who have a parent in prison. Uh. All the research shows that if those people were held whole closer to the communities from which they come, we would get far more benefit, uh,

far less recidivism, far more reintegration into the community. And so I proposed, and I wrote an OpEd on this that was published by the Daily News about a month ago, that once we closed Rikers Island for preacher detainees, we should seriously consider using that that location, which is remote for pre trial detainees, but is ironically not at all remote for people who are serving New York City people are serving prison sentences, to create to build prisons, to

use that space for for prisoners. Okay, speaking of prisoners, uh, Jonathan in new jails. The there's a question that maybe a hurdle, and that's building smaller jails in each of the boroughs to replace Rikers. And there are no specific details on that in Doblasio's plan. Isn't that bound to bring opposition from residents in those boroughs? Most certainly. I mean would be sort of not in my backyard quintessential example as jails. No one wants them in their in

their neighborhoods. But we really have to think about what we're trying to do, what they're trying to do here, and that is, you know, trying to make community based system for for rehabilitation and to just basically the community takes care of its own people. And I think that's a good idea. I think it's going to be along um, excuse me, it's going to be a long haul trying to convince people that is the right thing to do.

But I think if you can convey the benefits of not necessarily throwing people in cages, getting people into rehab getting the mental health uh services that they need, that communities may may become more open to these uh these new buildings. And Michael, this also contains actually one billion dollars in capital improvements just to keep the infrastructure at Rikers over the next ten years. Is that a lot to spend on a prison that's going to be, you know,

not used any longer. Well, I think two things. One is I think that can fit into what I said earlier that a lot of money to spend. But Riker's Island right now is really a very dangerous place where people are really being harmed significantly, not only the people that are being held there, but the staff that works there. And so it's really imperative that we meet minimal constitutional

standards wherever we hold people. And so I think that that spen, that that expenditure is essential, especially since we're talking about it at least a decade UH in the transition. But if we were to use that money to renovate those facilities, we would then have places that we could

use for for prisoners. The other thing that I would say about locating the jails that that are going to be UH needed in the in the boroughs outside of Riker's Island, I want to second what Jonathan said about that and also say we already have people in in jails in the local boroughs, so this isn't a new thing. Also, we would we love locating them in areas near courts, so it's not talking about putting them into into purely

residential purely residential areas. And also the other thing to say is that most of these people are non violent people. So Jonathan, what is your opinion about whether the closure of rikers within ten years is likely to happen. Um, well, a ten years is a long time in politics shift and if there's like an increasing crime, or if there's you know, a new mayor that comes in it doesn't want to do it, obviously, that's UH that that could change things directly. I don't know how likely it is,

but I hope, I hope it happens. And I think any any way to try and lower the number of people in there is UH an attempt worth making. And Michael, about a minute left, what's your opinion about whether this can be done in ten years. I think it can definitely be done in ten years. I think it's going

to take the will to do it. I it's really so wonderful that we have an elected officials that that's running the City of New York who has committed to doing this, and the City Council is also on board, and I think it's gonna you know, I think if we have a commitment to making a more sensible, safer, SMARTYR system, one that really benefits the people of New York, I think I think we've shown as a city we can make these things happen. All right, Well, thank you both.

That's Michael Mushland, professor at Pace University Law School, and Jonathan Blanks, a research at the Cato Institute. That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law. Will be back Monday at one pm Wall Street Time, thanks to our producer David Suckerman and our technical director Chris try Comey. Coming up next Bloomberg Markets with Carol Masser and Corey Johnson. So, Corey, what's coming up. We've got a really cool guest CEO

company called service Master. It's a five billion dollar company that does a lot of sort of disaster response, home warranty, residential, commercial stuff. Really fascinating company. We're gonna talk about CEO and just a little bit we'll be listening. That's Bloomberg Markets with Carol Masser and Corey Johnson. You've been listening to Bloomberg Law. I'm June Grosso. This is Bloomberg