Blas-Made Hell
Mayor’s policies drove Rikers’ fall to chaos
Agroup of Democratic state and city officials touring Rikers Island this week described horrific and inhumane conditions. That prompted outgoing Mayor de Blasio to outline a five-point plan to address the renewed concerns about the island jails’ residents. Yet Hizzoner’s plan is too little, too late, its priorities misplaced.
De Blasio is homing in on inmate suicides and unsanitary conditions. Receiving less attention, however, is jail violence, a problem that has only worsened under de Blasio. This, despite his early commitment to improving “jail conditions and inmate outcomes.”
We’ve been told for the last seven years that the way to improve life on Rikers Island (and in the city, more broadly) is to “focus on equity.” That approach has been tried, it has been measured —and it has been found wanting.
At the turn of the millennium, the average daily inmate population in Gotham jails was more than 15,500. In fiscal year 2000, there were 5,722 fight/assault infractions and 70 stabbings or slashings. In 2020, however, there were more than twice as many fight/assault infractions (11,191, to be exact), and 75 percent more stabbings/slashings (123). This, despite a more than 60 percent reduction in the average daily population, down to 5,841.
Much in the same way Gotham lost so much of the ground it gained on the public-safety front on city streets, the spike in jail violence is probably significantly driven by misguided, hastily crafted “reforms.”
The rise in jail violence wasn’t particularly gradual. Much of it happened under de Blasio, with the monthly rate of violent inmate-on-inmate incidents jumping nearly 70 percent from 2014 to 2020. And much of that spike happened from 2016 on.
What happened in 2016? That was the year the Department of Correction ended punitive segregation a k a solitary confinement for inmates 18 and under and scaled back use of the practice
for those aged 19 to 21. By 2017, the policy would be expanded to all inmates under 22.
This reform took an important tool out of the belts of the city’s correction officers, and an important deterrent out of the calculus of the city’s jail inmates. The city essentially admitted as much in a 2017 report, noting that the rate of violence in the detention center, used at the time to house younger inmates, rose “in part as a result of reducing and eventually eliminating punitive segregation.”
In late 2015, the city placed other restrictions on the ability of DOC officers to control violent inmates, banning kicks, neck restraints and strikes to the groin, neck, kidneys, spine, face and head. What followed was a doubling of the monthly rate of inmate assaults against staff, which jumped from 7.9 per 1,000 average daily population in 2016 to 15.8 in FY 2020.
Little wonder the city’s jail system is in the throes of an alarming staffing shortage.
The de Blasio administration has tried to explain away these horrendous performance indicators by arguing that its successful de-carceration efforts left officials with a more dangerous population, comprised of higher-risk inmates. But the data belie this excuse: The average number of inmates that fell
into the security-risk group — the most violent — on a given day dropped from about 1,200 in 2015 to 1,080 in 2020
Since 2015, Big Apple jails are housing more than 100 fewer high-risk inmates and 43 percent fewer inmates overall. This population should be easier to manage, not harder.
Another problem on Rikers Island is overcrowding. This one may seem curious in light of the sharp decline in the city’s jail population over the last 20 years — that is, until you learn that the city has cut its capacity by 30 percent over that same time span. This not only helped spread the coronavirus among inmates, but also likely contributed to violence, which is far more common in overcrowded facilities.
As de Blasio packs up his desk, his failures on the corrections front highlight three policy levers his successor — probably Eric Adams — should consider pulling as soon as possible: First, lift the ban on punitive segregation (solitary). Second, build out the city’s jail capacity. And third, invest in hiring more high-quality correction officers.
Rafael A. Mangual is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and head of research for its policing and public-safety initiative.