Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform in New York City
By Taylor Castro, Maryam Choudhary and Nicole Grennan
Criminal justice reform—including both the court and incarceration systems—is a crucial part of the future success of New York City. A disparity exists between the often impersonal, retributive, and bureaucratic character of the criminal justice system and the emotional, circumstantial and subjective situation of an individual facing justice. There is a failure to recognize the complexity of the many factors that often relate to criminal behavior: education, mental health, family issues, socioeconomic status, recidivism and more. That said, we encourage candidates in the 2017 mayoral election—in recognition of their moral obligation to consider these environmental factors underlying criminal behavior—to adopt these proposed changes to the criminal justice system.
We have already seen how individuals who wind up in the criminal justice system are likely to stay in the system for years. One study showed that almost half of federal offenders were rearrested in the eight years following their release.[1] There are many arguments as to why this may be happening, and a major one is that while in prison, people do not receive constructive treatment that can help them assimilate into society more easily when they leave prison. Lacking that, it easy for them to return to their criminal ways upon release. It has been proven that people who participate in a Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison program in Brooklyn were “36 percent less likely to be reconvicted and 67 percent less likely to return to prison after two years.”[2]
This less punitive approach can also apply to children in schools, where punitive disciplinary policies can be the start of a school-to-prison pipeline. If children are suspended instead of given counseling to help them, are they being set up for failure? How can we start in schools to make sure our children are law-abiding citizens?
Following the violence New York City saw in the 1970s, the 1980s saw a surge in juvenile crime. Much as criminal laws became harsher, school officials enacted tougher punishments to cut down on misbehavior among children in school. For offenses that would have previously been handled through counseling that engaged the principal, parents, guidance counselor, or any combination of those, students were now being suspended, expelled, or even arrested.[3]
Tougher disciplinary policies in schools have made children more likely to drop out and become entangled in the criminal justice system, as students with a school disciplinary record are more likely to be arrested in the future. In the 2011-2012 school year, New York City schools imposed nearly 70,000 suspensions, 40% more than the six years prior combined.[4] This makes students, disproportionately black and Hispanic, used to being persecuted for petty offenses, and less fearful of the consequences of more serious offences.
A number of solutions to keep kids out of the criminal justice system have been proposed, with a very popular one being to drastically cut down suspensions. The year immediately following that sharp increase in suspensions, 2012-2013, saw only 53,000 suspensions.[5] This is still a large number, but it is a decrease nonetheless. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took office in 2014, pushed to completely ban suspensions for students in kindergarten, first, and second grade.[6] Many people agree that students so young are still developing, and to punish them harshly for their outbursts is like punishing them for going through the natural changes a child experiences as he or she grows. The ban may still allow for children to be suspended under more serious circumstances, but there is overwhelming support for the complete suspension ban, with most people agreeing that such young children can really do no serious harm.
In high schools, where offenses can be more serious, new disciplinary codes are still being enacted. One high school in Queens is doing a more reward-based than punishment-based system and it seems to be working. On the contrary, some people believe that the decrease in suspension is causing students to act up even more, because they feel that they will not be punished. At this same high school in Queens, John Adams High School, teachers said that suspensions won’t be given out even when they are absolutely necessary, causing some students to threaten their peers’ safety and their ability to learn.[7] It is a hard balance between trying to cut back suspensions for students and still being able to successfully discipline them. This is similar to NYPD officials trying to cut back on imprisonments, but also not wanting to leave dangerous individuals on the streets.
Definite steps have been made toward decreasing the number of student. Positive reinforcement– rewarding children when appropriate—has apparently helped. When children see that they are valued and cared for, they may be less likely to act out in school, leading them to be less likely to act out in more violent ways in their adult lives. Programs such as that in Leadership and Public Service High School in Manhattan, where teachers were trained in a “restorative practices model,” are becoming more and more popular as people see how effective they are.[8] The benefits of helping troublesome children are clearly seen in how many of these students go on to live their lives.
Ending the school-to-prison pipeline starts in the schools, and it starts now. We all know the juvenile justice system is an imperfect one—riddled with unaddressed violence, addiction, mental illness, and other issues also found in adult correctional facilities.[9] It is estimated that “about two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates . . . have at least one mental illness” and are in obvious need of better health care services.[10] Still, “correctional health” research remains scarce because prisoners are “afforded special protections” that necessitate “far more paperwork than research on another population might.”[11] We propose a “radical” improvement: effective mental health services. This requires implementing a program that treats juvenile offenders as individuals, providing them with holistic medical care that advances beyond the inadequate treatment programs of the present. We need specialized services. This is not to say we should hurriedly diagnose every juvenile offender with a mental illness or a learning disability–we should look to understand their mental and emotional states so as to improve their behavior in the long term. That said, we need experienced health care workers who genuinely believe in rehabilitation–then these facilities can be purged of ineffectual, cynical workers. The Council Committee on Juvenile Justice recently met “to discuss several proposed laws on youth in detention facilities,” but it still falls on the next mayor to propose further reforms as well as see these laws come into fruition.[12] Inadequate mental health care is not an issue isolated to the juvenile justice system. At Rikers Island, for example, “substantial resources have been developed” for “inmates with psychiatric illnesses” but little has been done to accommodate and treat “inmates with intellectual or developmental disabilities.”[13] After incarceration release, individuals suffer from an environment with scarce rehabilitation resources—this means inadequate a
ccess to quality mental health services (ie: substance abuse programs), medication, Medicaid or stable housing.[14] In 2014, Mayor de Blasio “allocated $89 million…to address mental health issues in NYC jails,” however, there has to be any evidence of improvement.[15] Recent reports reveal “that correctional staff” have been “over-representing the success of their discharge planning” for years.[16]
This failure to provide health care doesn’t just apply to Rikers Island, but also to the many ot
her facilities run by the City Department of Corrections. A survey that assessed “burnout and ethics” among correctional
health care staff in the city jails found a need for “changes in agency policies and procedures” that strengthen “the overall mission to care for patients.”[17]
Given the slow pace of efforts to reform the city’s violent jail complex on Rikers Island, it is imperative to halt the school-to-prison pipeline before incarceration damages more young people. The facility houses “a disproportionate number of uneducated black and brown men with drug and mental health problems for nonviolent offenses, the majority of whom will return.”[18] In fact, “Rikers Island … houses more mentally ill than any psychiatric hospital,” so either the facility must radically improve its health care techniques or mentally ill individuals should not be in this correctional facility for lengthy periods of time.[19]
As research reveals a “deep-seated culture of violence” among Rikers Island officers, it seems bolstering the level of compassion is a requirement.[20] The Department of Justice needs to further reevaluate the punitive practices that emphasize zero tolerance and fail to consider recidivism reduction.[21] We support the proposal to eradicate “mandatory minimums,” so as to “return discretion to judges” who can evaluate an individual and “see their humanity if they break the law.”[22] Moreover, individuals who are “frequently admitted” to Rikers should receive “tailored supportive housin
g” so as to “improve outcomes” after incarceration.[23] Ultimately, the failure (or inability) to improve conditions on Rikers Island leaves only one option: shut down.
In her book Courting Kids, Carla J. Barret considers a different approach to handling juvenile offenders. The Manhattan Youth Part is an experimental youth court in New York City that attempts to respond to youth crimes with greater understanding and benevolence. What characterizes this juvenile court beyond “court-room routine and bureaucratic delay” are intense moments that reveal the circumstantial, heart-breaking nature of juvenile crime. Unlike general laws regarding accomplice liability, the court considers differences in individual involvement in a crime, differentiating between “threatening someone with a knife and acting as lookout for the knife wielder.” The court is inclined to learn more about the defendant’s life, attempting to place the crime into a larger, more complex context. The court values the role of parents in court proceedings, involving them both in understanding the defendant and coordinating their alternative-to-incarceration programs. Ultimately, the criminal justice system could do a lot of good by emulating the Manhattan Youth Court. What if all courts sought to serve “individualized justice” by responding to non-violent crime with punishments and rehabilitation efforts specific to the “circumstances, history, and life conditions of each individual?”
The criminal justice system could benefit from strategies that make it less harsh and imperso
nal. This type of comprehensive justice needs to be extended to non-violent offenders of all ages. An emphasis needs to be placed on conducting a holistic examination of a criminal offender and subsequently determining an app
ropriate response. If the court engages families in the process, then they—and the offender—feel they are being dealt with fairly and without discrimination. And if people feel they are being dealt with fairly, then they are more likely to accept punishment and benefit from rehabilitation efforts, thereby reducing second-time offenses.
Elaine Bartlett was just 26 in 1983 when she was sentenced to 20 years to life under New York State’s harsh Rockefeller drug laws. She had been offered $2,500 to carry a package of cocaine to Albany from where she lived in Harlem, and readily accepted it, as she had four young children to care for and was always struggling. Bartlett’s arrest negatively affected her children. Of her four children, the oldest boy Apache kept clean by playing basketball semi-professionally. Her younger son, Jamel, spent his youth getting in trouble in sc
hool, and working for small-time drug dealers until he found himself in Rikers by age 16. Through the story of Jamel, we see how a child growing up in a neighborhood and family full of drugs and crime makes him more likely to follow that path himself. Similarly, Bartlett grew up seeing her mother Yvonne go in and out of prison for various petty drug charges, and spent a few years in an orphanage on Staten Island.[24] Thus, we can see how the cycle of poverty and imprisonment perpetuates itself.
This cycle is also furthered by racially discriminatory policing, which targets youth and adults alike. In Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, she references “decades of cognitive bias research” which “demonstrates that both unconscious and conscious biases lead to discriminatory actions, even when an individual does not want to discriminate.” The Supreme Court case Terry vs. Ohio, which established the stop-and-frisk rule, which formally articulated that “so long as a police officer has ‘reasonable articulable suspicious’ that someone is engaged in criminal activity and dangerous, it is constitutionally permissible to stop, question, and frisk him or her–even in the absence of probable cause.” These two facts in conjunction with one another opened the floodgates for what Alexander called “pretext stops.” In New York, “African Americans were stopped six times more frequently than whites” and by 2008, “African Americans accounted for 85 percent of all frisks.”[25]
Alexander notes there is undoubtedly a significant overlap of race and poverty, and cites the particular damage tough criminal justice enforcement does to “communities of color, and particularly on young black men.” After releasing people from prison, they “are sent back to the impoverished places they came from, but are blocked from re-entering society. Often they cannot vote, get jobs, or receive public benefits like subsidized housing.”[26] The Inmate Jail Release Services on the New York City resources page boasts that “Through the Service Planning and Assistance Network (SPAN), the city provides free and confidential discharge planning services for recently released inmates. You can get help with medication, housing, health insurance, public assistance, mental health services and case management. Many community based-organizations help inmates preparing to leave jail.”[27] However, the link which prompts the user to “find jail release services” directs the user to a NYC health map, with no further indication of where to go next. Considering “about 70 percent of offenders and ex-offenders are high school dropouts, and about half are functionally illiterate,”[28] the difficulty in navigating this website makes it relatively useless. Additionally, “when those labeled criminals return to their communities, they are often met with scorn and contempt, not just by employers, welfare workers, and housing officials, but also by their own neighbors, teacher, and even members of their own families.”[29] It is not likely that most inmates will have access to a computer, when they are homeless, friendless, and jobless. When “housing discrimination against people branded felons is perfectly legal” and “employers in most states can deny jobs to people who were arrested but never convicted of any crime,”[30] recidivism rates should not come as a surprise. It is necessary to implement more housing and employment programs for ex-criminals. But their implementation is simply not enough. It is also necessary that, on top of existing, they are accessible and cost-effectively executed. There is no point in creating programs that require a data analyzer with a masters degree in order to find the program online. And there is no point in minimal investment in a program, only to have it be inefficient because of negligible funding. In choosing to invest directly in the lives of criminals released from prison, we are saving the money that would otherwise be invested in over-policing and maintenance of the criminal justice system in New York. Long-term, these investments will benefit the city, saving both money and lives.
These preventative measures are closely tied to the steps being tried to end the school-to-prison pipeline. Similar to the way “many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages, labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their decrepit, underfunded inner city schools to brand-new, high-tech prisons,”[31] offenders are continually tracked after leaving prison. When they find themselves “homeless, unemployed and carrying a mountain of debt,”[32] they are effectively resigned to stagnation. If we can invest so much money in policing, why can we not invest an equal amount in the comprehensive prevention of crime through improved social services? According to Alexander, “the NYPD made 50,300 marijuana arrests in 2010 alone, mostly of young men of color.”[33] Each arrest costs between $1,000 and $2,000.[34] This means that, in 2010, New York spent between $50 million and $100 million on arresting suspects for possession of marijuana alone.[35] That is an astronomical amount of money for one out of every seven offenses to be lowest-level marijuana possession arrest.[36] However, it is important to note that in 2014, the de Blasio administration put a new policy regarding marijuana arrests into action. Going forward, “someone in possession of 25 grams or less of marijuana” will be issued “a summons,” instead of being arrested, “so long as there is no warrant for the individual’s arrest and the person has identification.”[37]
Imagine if all that money had been allocated to the prevention of crime, as opposed to simply th
e punishment. The idea that sticking a person in jail–with all the ways that can hinder his or her prospects in life–will som
ehow cure society is ludicrous. If we take even a portion of the superfluous funds dedicated to nonviolent and minor offenses, we can generate programs to thwart the school-to-prison pipeline, to offer vocational training and improved care for prisoners during their time, and to offer guidance to people after leaving prison.
To tackle the issue of housing discrimination, we can invest in temporary, subsidized housing facilities specifically for ex-criminals. Putting all the former prisoners together in one facility could function in the way many substance abuse programs do. It promotes and engenders feelings of[38] belonging and acceptance, even when one’s own community and family may have rejected him or her. The housing can also come with stipulations, such as required enrollment in anger management programs or drug-abuse programs. To then tackle the issue of job discrimination, perhaps we could work agreements out with companies to hire former prisoners. The greatest difficulty in working out agreements of this nature is the stigma associated with criminality. If we can additionally work on destigmatizing the average person’s idea of a stereotypical criminal, we simultaneously widen the horizons of a former prisoner. When he is no longer a monster, but instead a human being who made a mistake, he is indisputably a more hirable candidate. Destigmatization must be incorporated into the mass media. This could mean utilizing ads on subways or at bus stops, and airing commercials on public TV and radio stations. It could also mean incorporating it into curriculums at schools, and hosting seminars in public, trendy places, to inform people about an issue they likely know little about. Once criminality is destigmatized, criminals will have much more liberty in areas like housing and employment.
In short, we gazed into the abyss and saw a vile, pseudo-beneficent criminal justice system–one grossly misaligned with the principles of this city. To the candidates in the 2017 mayoral election: we hope you find these proposed reforms of the New York City criminal justice and incarceration systems enlightening–and maybe even useful.
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[1] Leonard A. Sipes Jr., “Percent of Released Prisoners Returning to Incarceration,” September 29, 2010, http://www.crimeinamerica.net/2010/09/29/percent-of-released-prisoners-returning-to-incarceration/
[2] Dareh Gregorian, NYC Jail, Prison Incarceration Rates Drop by 50% as Crime Falls, New York Daily News, Oct. 28, 2016.
[3] “The School-to-Prison Pipeline,” New York Times, May 29, 2013.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Advocates for the Children of New York,Policy Agenda: School-to-Prison Pipeline, http://www.advocatesforchildren.org/policy_and_initiatives/policy_agenda/school_to_prison_pipeline,
[6] George Joseph, “Why Kindergarteners Might Still Be Suspended in New York City,” Atlantic, August 12, 2016.
[7] Patrick Wall, “As New York City’s Suspension Rate Falls, Some Educators See a Parallel Dip in Discipline,” Chalkbeat, April 20, 2016,
[8] Susan Dominus,“An Effective but Exhausting Alternative to High-School Suspensions,” New York Times Magazine, Sept. 7 2016).
[9] Nicholas Confessore, “New York Finds Extreme Crisis in Youth Prisons,” New York Times, December 13, 2009).
[10] Solomon Moore, “Mentally Ill Offenders Strain the Juvenile Justice System,” New York Times, August 9, 2009.
[11] Jeremy Faust, “Aaron Hernandez’s Suicide Highlights a Huge Gap in Correctional Health,” Slate Magazine, April 20, 2017.
[12] Samar Khurshid, “The Week Ahead in New York Politics,” (Gotham Gazette, February 13, 2017).
[13] Ben Hattem, “NYC Jails Fail to Identify Prisoners With Cognitive Problems,” City Limits.org, October 27, 2016.
[14] Roshan Abraham, “Reports Indicate City’s Progress is Slow on Mental Health Planning for Inmates,” CityLimits.org, January 12, 2017.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ramneet Kalra, “Staff Satisfaction, Ethical Concerns, and Burnout in the New York City Jail Health System,” Sage Journals, October 12, 2016.
[18] Jennifer R. Wynn, “Inside Rikers: the Social Impact of Mass Incarceration in the Twenty-First Century,” Judges Journal, October 2012.
[19] Michael J. Finkle, “Competency Courts: A Creative Solution For Restoring Competency to the Competency Process,” Behavioral Sciences and the Law, September 2009. .
[20] Gary Hunter, “Deep-Seated Culture of Violence” and Abysmal Medical Care at Rikers Island, Prison Legal News, July 2015.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ross MacDonald, “The Rikers Island Hot Spotters: Defining the Needs of the Most Frequently Incarcerated,” American Journal of Public Health, September 17, 2015.
[24] Jennifer Gonnerman, Life on the Outside: the Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2004).
[25] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (New York: The New Press, 2012).
[26] “End Mass Incarceration Now,” New York Times, May 24, 2014.
[27] “Inmate Jail Release Services,” The Official Website of the City of New York, http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/1157/inmate-jail-release-services.
[28] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 150
[29] Ibid., 165
[30] Ibid., 144
[31] Ibid., 150
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Harry G. Levine, “$75 Million a Year: The Cost of New York City’s Marijuana Possession Arrests,” DrugPolicy.org, May 15, 2011.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid.
[37] “Reactions to Mayor de Blasio, Commissioner Bratton’s Announcement of Policy Change to Reduce Marijuana Possession Arrests,” The Official Website of the City of New York, http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/509-14/reactions-mayor-de-blasio-commissioner-bratton-s-announcement-policy-change-reduce, November 10, 2014.
