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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good Monday morning, everyone. We'll talk about booster shots on today's show. It's confusing what the FDA Advisory Committee came out with on Friday, and that was late in the day after our show. We'll try to explain who would be in and who would be out, and the battle still going on over that before a final decision. Also the global ethics of this decision. We have one of the leading experts in the field, Dr. Eric Topol, lined up for that today.

We also have a call-in on how you use the he/him, she/her, they/them pronouns in your own communication with people now, even if you totally identify with the gender you were assigned at birth. We'll have a special call-in within that for teachers. How do you address your students now before they express their pronoun preferences to you? We'll talk about the latest developments in President Biden's attempts to be this generation's FDR with his human infrastructure and climate safety net bill, and how Democrats in Congress, including those name-mentioned - Sinema, Swasey, and Rice - are making it more complicated, maybe for better, maybe for worse.

We begin with the crisis in New York City on Rikers Island. There was another inmate death on Rikers yesterday. Early reports are it's from natural causes, but it's the 11th in the last year, way more than usual, and that's just the latest example of an unsafe situation for incarcerated people and corrections staff alike. At least those corrections staff who are actually showing up for work, which is part of the problem. Governor Hochul took one step toward getting people out of there to safety on Friday.

Advocates are also increasingly frustrated with Mayor de Blasio. We'll play some clips of what he said about the Riker situation on this show on Friday, including what he will and won't do about it, and get a critique and other proposals that we'll examine from a leading advocate for reform. It's Corey Stoughton, an attorney in charge of the Legal Aid Society Criminal Defense Practice's Special Litigation Unit. Legal Aid has many clients at Rikers, some of whom we understand will be released under Governor Hochul's plan, some who won't. Corey, thanks so much for your time this morning as you try to manage clients in crisis and the overall situation. Welcome to WNYC today.

Corey Stoughton: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: First, for people not following this closely, how bad is it?

Corey Stoughton: Brian, it's really hard to find the words to describe how bad it is. The head of the correctional medical service had said that the jail's incapable of keeping people safe. Public Advocate Jumaani Williams, when he visited last week, said he's visited Rikers many times, he's never seen it this bad. As you mentioned, 11 people are dead. Although it's true they said his death was cardiac arrest, that's the man who contracted COVID-19 and had serious medical issues going in.

Which he and his lawyer, who works at Legal Aid with me, repeatedly asked for medical care for him when he was in the jail, and repeatedly asked for him to be released because of those medical vulnerabilities and he wasn't, and he wasn't given medical care. We're waiting for the details, but it's really hard to imagine that that didn't contribute to that death. That's the pattern of all these 11 deaths. We have a jail system that is simply not capable of keeping people safe, whether it's from self-harm or from medical crises, or from violence within the facility.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play some clips, Corey, of Mayor de Blasio here on Friday, and get your reaction. First, I asked him if he uses the same language that a number of lawmakers who visited the jail last week are using. This begins with my question. Do you agree it's a humanitarian crisis?

Mayor de Blasio: I agree it's a profound problem, and it has to be addressed.

Brian Lehrer: Let's stop right there for a moment then we'll pick it up and play the rest of that answer. I saw over the weekend, Corey, that people were reacting with disappointment to that particular response. Does it matter if the mayor calls it a humanitarian crisis if he says he agrees that it's a profound problem?

Corey Stoughton: I think it matters in the context of the mayor's-- really in his inaction. He has declared a state of emergency but he's not treating this like it's an emergency. The steps that he's outlined to take will do nothing to address the crisis. Even under the most optimistic scenario, the measures he's announced that he wants to take will take weeks or months to make any difference to what's happening on Rikers Island.

He's been called on repeatedly to reduce the jail population. Instead, he's overseeing a system that has driven it to new heights and that day by day sends more and more people into a dangerous situation, and he does that under the guise of public safety. That's not public safety. His rhetoric matches his action and his failure to understand that people are dying, and his failure to take responsibility for that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go further into what the mayor and the governor are doing and not doing. The beginning of the answer that we played right there continued like this on Friday morning with what was brand new at that time.

Mayor de Blasio: We have some breaking news on that too which we just heard now. I've had a series of conversations with Governor Hochul and I want to thank her. We're just getting the news that she is acting to help us get a number of people out of Rikers immediately.

Brian Lehrer: What exactly, Corey, did the governor announce on Friday, and how much of a difference will make in Legal Aid's opinion?

Corey Stoughton: Governor Hochul on Friday signed into law the Less is More Act, which is a reform that we and other advocates have fought for for years to reform New York's parole system. We are a state, we have been a state that sends more people back to prison for minor technical rule violations on parole, for non-criminal violations of parole, than most other states; almost all other states in the country. What the Less is More Act does, it does three things really, fundamentally.

It eliminates mandatory detention of people who are accused of parole violations. That's the one thing, and that's a fairly significant number of people who've gone into Rikers Island. It also sets graduated penalties for people accused of technical parole violations. That will substantially over time make an enormous difference in reducing rates of incarceration, both in jails but also in prisons, and the rate of reincarceration of people who trip up on parole rules when they're trying to get their lives back on track after a period of incarceration.

On top of that, Governor Hochul exhibited real leadership on Friday when she said even though the act as passed by the legislature doesn't have to be implemented until March of 2022, she immediately ordered the release of people from Rikers who are held on those technical rule violations. That's several hundred people who will be released under that rule. That's the kind of decisive action that we need, and that's the action she could take as the governor. That's the lever that she has her hand on as the governor of the state of New York.

Again, by contrast, the mayor has his hand on several levers where he could take some similarly bold steps to try to take people out of this unsafe environment. Instead he thanks the governor for pulling her levels and refuses to pull his own.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We'll get some more clips of the mayor refusing to pull various levers, clips from Friday's show, but I want to stop for a minute and highlight something that you just referred to that the governor said. Which was that New York incarcerates more people for technical parole violations than any other state, or almost any other state. I want to play a clip of the governor saying that herself. She calls it shameful. Listen, folks, in this clip to the states that Governor Hochul compares New York with.

Governor Hochul: New York State incarcerates more people for parole violations than anywhere in the country. That is a point of shame for us, and it needs to be fixed. It's going to be fixed today, and it'll put us among the ranks of others. This is also embarrassing to say, that Georgia and Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana are already ahead of us on this. Okay? Little catching up to do here, folks, but we want to have people rejoin society.

Brian Lehrer: Can you talk more about that, Corey? My guest is Corey Stoughton from Legal Aid as we talk about the crisis on Rikers Island. We'll open up the phones in just a minute for anyone on Rikers or anywhere else. When she says New York incarcerates more people for technical parole violations than any other state, and then she cites what we generally consider in New York to be very regressive states - Georgia, Alabama, et cetera - New York has a lot more people than any of those states. What's the apples-to-apples comparison here really?

Corey Stoughton: It is an apples-to-apples comparison. It's a rate of reincarceration, not a population thing. The reason we did that is that we have-- Just for listeners who want to get their heads around the system, people serve their sentences for what they've done. Then they come back, and for many, many years, they are then generally under a system of supervised release where the parole system sets sometimes really very draconian rules for how they can live their life. Everything from where they can live to what jobs they can have or must have. Restrictions on who they can meet with, and requirements to attend parole meetings and to check in with parole officers, and to report changes of address.

This is a population that is often pretty unstable. They lose jobs, they get jobs. They lose housing, they get housing. They may have a drug relapse or a mental health crisis. For any number of reasons that are pretty understandable in the larger scheme of things, they're consistent with someone who's trying their best to get their life on track. People violate those technical rules. Maybe they miss a meeting with their parole officer, or they fail to report a change in address because they have unstable housing.

New York sends people to jail and back to prison for those technical violations. This act addresses that by eliminating mandatory detention and rolling back the rate at which people can get sent back to prison for those kinds of technical parole violations.

Brian Lehrer: I was told that Mayor de Blasio actually has to approve the release of each of those 191 individuals covered under the governor's announcement pertaining to those incarcerated at Rikers for small technical violations. I asked if he will do that, if he'll let them all go, and here's the answer in which he reserved the right to not, as he said, who he would agree to release.

Mayor de Blasio: Anybody that does not pose an immediate threat unless it's something like a technical parole violation mixed with other offenses, violent or serious offenses. I want to be very, very clear. It's a major qualifier, and I want to be blunt about that.

Brian Lehrer: He wanted to be blunt about that major qualifier. If the individual was in for a violent offense and could be a threat to public safety, then he might not approve their release from Rikers even if they were reincarcerated on a technical parole violation. Fair enough with the public interest, the public safety at stake as the mayor might see it?

Corey Stoughton: I want to say two things about this. The first is that the mayor's comment there really reveals how little he's paying attention to or understands the system because those 191 individuals, those technical parole violations, are all people who have not been charged with any new crime. They're people who are in solely because of a technical rule violation that is noncriminal in nature.

There are hundreds more people on Rikers Island who are in on a parole hold, who are there because the parole warrant was issued because of a new crime. Some of those crimes might be crimes of violence and some of them are not, but that's a whole separate category. Those 191 people are there because they missed a meeting or did something that is simply not criminal. To hold up their release or think you're going to hold up their release is just a really ignorant thing to say. The second thing I want to say about [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: If I understood it correctly, his argument was if they were originally incarcerated for a violent crime and then they were out on parole and they were being monitored, maybe those people have to be held to a stricter standard because of their original crime. If they commit a technical violation, this is the way I understood it anyway, he might be less inclined to release them. Is that the way you heard him?

Corey Stoughton: I'm not sure. You might be right, Brian, but even if you're right, that is not how the system is meant to work. People serve their sentences for the crime they committed and then they're released. The question is do we think as New Yorkers, given how dangerous Rikers is, that being sentenced to Rikers right now has the potential to be a death sentence? The fact that someone missed a meeting with a parole officer no matter what the criminal history is, is enough to send them back into that unsafe environment. That just strikes me as the wrong way of approaching the question.

Brian Lehrer: You wanted to make another point about that.

Corey Stoughton: It flows from that. I want to talk a bit about this 11th death that we just had because it's a really-- This person, a client of Legal Aid's, was in on a technical parole violation. He was arrested, originally convicted of a drug crime. He was in Rikers this weekend solely because he was caught smoking marijuana, which is a non-criminal offense. He should have been released, but he was still there when he died over the weekend. I mention that because it shows the urgency of what needs to be done here.

That the mayor is not only refusing to consider releases of people who are to work for these programs as many people have called on him to do, as you asked him about on Friday, and I'm sure we'll get to that, but he's threatening to slow down the release of people that the governor has stepped out and boldly said we need to release. There are lives at stake. There's someone who has already died who was in that situation just over the weekend, and those are the stakes we're dealing with.

Brian Lehrer: That is so sad and so infuriating if that person was reincarcerated just because they were smoking marijuana, which, oh, by the way, is perfectly legal in New York right now. Listeners, we can take your phone calls on the Rikers situation. Anyone at Rikers who wants to use what phone call privileges you get this morning to give us a call, you are invited, 646-435-7280. Anyone close to you there or professionally involved in this situation in any way, correction officer listening right now on or off duty or called in sick, 646-435-7280.

Anyone else for Corey Stoughton from the Legal Aid Society who has many clients there including, as we just learned, the one tragically who died last night. 646-435-7280, or tweet your comment or question @BrianLehrer.

All right, one more clip of the mayor. I asked him about calls by advocates like you to use his power to release people for their health and safety like he did at the beginning of the pandemic with many people under what's known as 6A powers. Here's what the mayor said.

Mayor de Blasio: We're not looking at 6A right now. We're looking at something that will achieve much, much more, which is this big movement we got here, hundreds and hundreds at a time. We're also working with the state. There are people who were supposed to be sent to state prison long ago and it didn't move quick enough; the state is helping us to expedite. That's another several hundred people. We're asking judges also to use supervised release more on the front end when they're sentencing if it's a nonviolent offense.

Brian Lehrer: No 6A health and safety releases for now like when the pandemic first began and they wanted to have less density in the congregate care setting, but all those other things. How satisfying or not is that answer to you?

Corey Stoughton: It's not enough yet. I think the mayor is right, and I agree with him that we need to look at bail decisions that are being made by prosecutors and judges. That's a really important part of this. Using supervised release is an option. Also not sending people to Rikers is an option. Some prosecutors are already acting on this. At the end of last week, Eric Gonzalez, the District Attorney in Brooklyn, sent a message loud and clear that prosecutors' decisions about seeking bail on crimes need to be different in this environment when Rikers is this dangerous. He's working with our office and other defenders to identify a list of people who maybe can be released just as we did during COVID.

That's a really positive step forward, but it's not enough. Over the weekend, I was on emails with Legal Aid attorneys who are sending me stories out of Manhattan and other boroughs where prosecutors are still seeking bail on nonviolent offenses, including for people who are very sick, who should not be sent into this environment. We need to see more change and faster from prosecutors. A big driver of this crisis, a lot of people might wonder why is this happening? The answer is it's a crisis upon a crisis.

Rikers should be closed, or at least well on its way to being closed; that was the plan. Instead of bringing the population down to the levels that the mayor promised it would be brought down to to facilitate the closing of this really dilapidated facility that is not functioning properly, the population has been growing. Part of that is the result of rollbacks of the bail reform measures that were passed in 2019. Those rollbacks gave more discretion to judges and prosecutors to send people to Rikers Island, to set bail in their cases that is too high for most people to afford, and as a result, those people are incarcerated.

There are over 1,500 people in Rikers right now that are incarcerated on nonviolent offenses, and that number has gone up and up since the rollback of bail reforms. That's the result of decisions that are getting made in courts across the city, and that's got to change. The mayor's right to focus on that, but he can do more. This issue of 6A, which is a legal provision that allows the mayor to release people who are sentenced to work-release, which he did during the pandemic, in which his Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice own data suggests that those people who were released did not re-offend, in fact, re-offended at lower rates than the general population, this is a safe thing to do.

It's a smart thing to do and it could save lives, and he's not doing it because he's not focusing on it. He wants other people to make those decisions: the governor, judges, prosecutors, but he won't make those decisions himself to save people's lives.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know if you do political analysis, but do you think as the mayor apparently plans to run for governor next year and therefore has to appeal to many people who had voted in the Democratic primary upstate who may have either no connection to, or just no idea about what things are like on Rikers Island, and may have a certain kind of reaction when they hear the top line of his story? Do you think he's taking a more conservative approach than he would have previously because he's setting up this statewide run?

Corey Stoughton: I don't know. Political analysis probably isn't my forte, Brian. It's dangerous to armchair-psychologize people either, but I will say that the one thing, as someone who has been paying a lot of attention to this over the past several weeks and months and really years, it doesn't seem to me that the mayor's focused on this. He has called it a crisis. Everyone around him has called it a crisis. The governor has stepped up and taken dramatic action leadership, and we're just not seeing that from him. I don't know why that is, but we need more. We need leadership and we're just not seeing it.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call from Dave on Staten Island. Dave, you're on WNYC. Thank you very much for calling in.

Dave: Hey. How are you doing, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What you got for us?

Dave: I wanted to talk about, besides the fact that Rikers is completely broken, it seems that on the street, maybe because of bail reform and people anticipating COVID was going to be over, that judges and cops are very quick to arrest people and incarcerate them.

Brian Lehrer: I saw from my screener, did they get this right, that you yourself got out of Rikers last Friday?

Dave: Yes, I was released last Friday. I was originally charged with a felony and they immediately offered me a violation. I've never heard of that, but it seemed like in the courtroom, and there were a lot of guys inside, it seemed like they did not think they were going to be incarcerated when they got arrested.

Brian Lehrer: Can you give us a firsthand report about what you experienced or what you witnessed there?

Dave: First of all, in intake just getting into Rikers, a guy hanged himself, and instead of the COs coming in and getting him down he was pepper-sprayed immediately. Then there were a few beatings where some of the people were beat. Later they dragged them outside the intake cell and they left them there for about an hour and 10 minutes. On top of that, none of the COs in intake had their body cams on at any time.

Brian Lehrer: Dave, thank you very much. I hope things work out well for you. Corey, we can't verify those allegations that he just made, but is that consistent with the kinds of things you've been hearing?

Corey Stoughton: Yes. That story he just told, that's the second time I've heard that story. I heard that story from another client which, again, I haven't been able to verify, but that's the second time I've heard that exact story. We have heard from clients that there are fights over bread. Let me explain when he talks about intake. Intake is the room you go into when you first arrive at Rikers, and it's meant to hold people for a little while while they get a housing unit. It's got benches, there's no beds, there's no toilets.

When we toured, and elected representatives toured earlier last week, they said that people are having to defecate into plastic bags and just urinate in the intake center because they're stuck there for days; that's what's happening. There's no system for delivering food into intake, the food system is elsewhere. People are just going into intake. They're meant to be there for a few hours and they're staying there for days, and we've heard, in some instances, even over a week.

That is one of the places where things are just breaking down. People are not getting access to consistent water to three meals a day. They're throwing granola bars into the intake to feed people. These are the stories we're hearing. When someone's in intake they haven't been screened for medical or mental health issues. That's a critical step in taking care of the basic needs of people who are going into a carceral setting, into a jail or prison, and that's just not happening. That is one of the critical ways that things are breaking down at Rikers.

Brian Lehrer: I think we're getting a phone call now from a current inmate at Rikers. Let's talk to Nathaniel. Nathaniel, you're on WNYC. Thank you very much for calling in.

Nathaniel: Good morning. I'm a 61-year-old man. I got asthma, I'm a diabetic, and I've been trying to get to the clinic for a month. Every time we ask we got to call the phone, they ask, "[unintelligible 00:25:17]?" At the same time when I call the clinic, they say I'm on sick call, but I've never been called. I'm sneezing, I'm blowing my nose, I'm coughing, and I got asthma. I'm trying to get some help and I can't even contact my lawyer because the phone system is so offbeat that when you try to answer the phone, people don't know that you got to wait certain minutes just to answer the phone.

You don't have no officers in here. The only time an officer come in is someone is fighting or someone is sick. The only way you can get to the clinic is sick. Intake is so messed up. The hallway's got dirty trash all over the place and they don't want nobody to clean up, but at the same time, they don't want to pay nobody to clean up. I'm at OBCC, and I'm going through so much in here, man

Brian Lehrer: Stay there for a second. I want to see if our guest can get you some help as an individual, as well as address the overall situation that you're describing.

Nathaniel: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, one of the things that I know from the reporting is that what Nathaniel describes is one of the central problems there. People who are sick, even if they have medical clinic appointments, are not able to keep those appointments because of the staffing shortage and other reasons. Corey Stoughton from Legal Aid, first of all, can you intervene or your people intervene to get Nathaniel to a doctor? Sounds like he wants to see a doctor and needs to see a doctor. Maybe he needs a COVID test also or who knows what, but secondly, can you address the larger situation that he's describing?

Corey Stoughton: Yes. Nathaniel, if you can give the producers your name and your DIN number, and I will get that after this-

Nathaniel: No problem.

Corey Stoughton: -I can make sure that we get you attention immediately.

Nathaniel: Please, because I've been trying to get the sick call. My head hurt, my throat hurt, and they don't try to help you until you fall out. When you fall out they take time to come and get you.

Brian Lehrer: Nathaniel, can I ask you one more-- [crosstalk] Go ahead. I was just going to ask you one more follow-up question. I don't know how long you've been there, but have you been there long enough to see a change, a deterioration, in the conditions that you can describe?

Nathaniel: I've been here since January.

Brian Lehrer: That's a long time. What's changed since then?

Nathaniel: I got arrested it got worse. It's got roaches in here. I even got the intake worker right next to me, and he could tell you how bad it is in there. The only time an officer's going to help you if you laying out on the floor, and when you lay on the floor they don't come on time.

Brian Lehrer: Nathaniel, hang on. I don't want to use up your minutes before we can take your contact information, so I'm putting you on hold. Screeners, I think you heard our conversation about this. Please take Nathaniel's contact information if he wants to give it to you. I'm shaking, Corey. A man in his 60s, no less.

Corey Stoughton: Brian, this is what it has been to be a Legal Aid lawyer for the last several months. We have a hotline from the jail into our Prisoner Rights Project. We also get emails from our attorneys, who are the criminal defense attorneys who call our team to get assistance, and it has been overwhelming for months. It's always a little overwhelming, but it's for months. If you'll just let me, I want to give out the number for our hotline, our Prisoner Rights hotline.

If there's anyone in Rikers who is there and needs help, or family members of someone in Rikers who needs help, that you can call 212-577-3530. That is the Legal Aid Society's Prisoner Rights hotline. There will be someone to answer that call and refer you to a paralegal, or someone else at Legal Aid who will try to intervene if you need medical assistance. We are especially focused right now on medical crisis. That's a number you can call and we can try to intervene, but it is overwhelming.

As Nathaniel was saying, the issue is when the people aren't getting medical care. He talked about sick calls. The way it's supposed to work is that if you're ill you're supposed to let someone know. You go on the list and you get taken to the clinic because the doctors don't come into the housing areas, doctors and nurses on the island, but no one's taking them. The head of Correctional Health Services recently wrote a letter saying that the system had collapsed. That they cannot live up to their ethical obligations to treat people on Rikers Island right now because the system is so broken. Again, we're sending people into this environment; a population that does have a disproportionate number of medical issues.

Brian Lehrer: We have a few minutes left in the segment. I want to talk a little bit more about what's contributing to the conditions there, and then a little bit about your recommendations, Legal Aid Society's recommendations, for what can be done that we haven't already addressed. I'm looking at the testimony that one of your colleagues gave before City Council last week. Some of the headline sections in here we've discussed, like people are fighting over bread. That's a section that's enough to make you shake. The collapse of medical care is another one, and we just heard firsthand testimony about that from our caller.

Conditions in intake areas are deplorable. You described intake. I think for a lot of listeners to the show who had no idea what intake is at Rikers Island or another jail, now they know a little more about it and why people shouldn't be kept there for more than what's supposed to be 24 hours if it's just benches and things like that. The extraordinarily high death rate. One of the contributors that you cite, really two of the contributors that you cite to these conditions, look contradictory on the face of it on first blush.

One of them is what you call the chronic overstaffing of the department, which you say jeopardizes security and safety. Then the next one is uniformed staff will not come to work. Probably a lot of listeners have heard about how many correction officers are calling in sick; that they're really understaffed there. You're complaining about chronic overstaffing and chronic understaffing. Can you clarify?

Corey Stoughton: Yes. It's important to understand that the New York City correctional system has 8,500 corrections officers. Even at the height of the population in recent years at Rikers, there are just over 6,000 people in the prison. The ratio of corrections officers to people who are incarcerated is higher than any other jail in the country, including jails that are very comparable like Cook County in Chicago and Los Angeles. There's a narrative out there, which I think the mayor has embraced and others have embraced, that this is about we don't have enough corrections officers, and that's just not right.

There is a problem that the corrections officers we have are not going to work. The reason that they're not going to work is that the jail is broken. If I were a correction officer I wouldn't want to go to work either. Again, Rikers is a facility that should be closing, and instead, we're packing it full of people. The Department of Corrections has closed and then had to reopen buildings on Rikers and whole complexes on Rikers because of the booming population. Because we keep sending people that we don't need to send to this terrible place.

It's a place that's making people sick. The rate of COVID infection amongst corrections officers, and indeed amongst the incarcerated, was as high as any place in the city; one of the highest places in the country during the pandemic. Even those who aren't sick are saying they're sick. This is a problem of corrections officers are calling in sick, and nobody believes that all of the corrections officers who are calling in sick are actually sick. They don't want to go to work because it's a horrendous place; it's a hell hole.

Adding more corrections officers into that mix is not going to solve the problem because how long will it be before the new 600 corrections officers that the mayor has hired fall into the same pattern of not going to work because it's a terrible place to be? Imagine if your house the foundation was sinking and the windows all broke as a result, and you're like, "Oh, well, I better replace those windows and get new windows in there." You have to fix the foundation, and that's the problem. That's why there's this kind of somewhat paradoxical or there's too many corrections officers but they're also not enough. That's the answer.

You can't fix the problem with more corrections officers, you have to fix Rikers. You have to close it, and you have to stop sending people there.

Brian Lehrer: The recommendation in your report to not just stop sending people to Rikers but halt new admissions to the Department of Correction, that's the way it is in the testimony that was given by your colleague on Wednesday. Does that mean don't put any more people in jail regardless of how serious a crime they're charged with, because that's some of the pushback on Legal Aid and other advocates from conservative critics?

Corey Stoughton: Yes, I understand that. What we need are intake limits, and that does mean making different decisions under a different calculus. The reality though is, as I mentioned before, there are 1,500 people right now in Rikers. At least 1,500 people who are incarcerated on pre-trial accused, not convicted, on non-violent offenses. There are another several hundred who are serving sentences for minor crimes of sentences of less than a year, and they've served some of that time already, serving what we call city sentences, generally for misdemeanor crimes.

There's room here to reduce the population and stop sending those 1,500 non-violent offenses. There are new people going in on accusations like that every day. We've got to put limits, and this is not unprecedented; we did this. It's been a long-time but this is a really unprecedented crisis. In the 1970s, New Yorkers of a certain age will remember The Tombs, and The Tombs got so bad that a court imposed intake limits on how many people could be sent there. The reality is, if you think about public safety it is just not public safety to send people into an unsafe environment. That's just not public safety by any definition.

Brian Lehrer: Hey, before you go, is the new progressive-- I think it's fair to call him the progressive correction commissioner, Vin Schiraldi, making a difference? We've had him on the show twice this year. The first time when he was an outside advocate like you, and then Mayor de Blasio appointed him correction commissioner and he came on the show again. It sounds like he's on your side on most of these things. Is he making a difference? Can he make a difference?

Corey Stoughton: I think he is making a difference. I think his heart is in the right place. I think he's trying very hard. I think he's up against a system where we need really bold leadership to take the steps that are necessary to take. We're not seeing that from the mayor's office. He can only do so much, and what we really need is we need to slow down the rate of incarceration and the rate at which we're sending people into his buildings; into the commissioner's buildings. Right now, with the system that he inherited, that system is not capable of keeping those people safe, and that's the reality.

This doesn't need to last forever, but we need to take dramatic steps to fix this because it is a crisis. It is a humanitarian crisis of proportions that we just have not seen in nearly living memory in this city. Bold action is really needed, and we're just not seeing it yet.

Brian Lehrer: Final question. We continue our coverage tomorrow of the crisis at Rikers Island, as I said, with Brooklyn DA, Eric Gonzalez. Anything you would like to hear me ask him?

Corey Stoughton: I would like to hear how he's implementing his announcement that he made last week. He said the right things on, I think it was Thursday or Friday last week, about how we need to make decisions about bail and pretrial detention differently in this context of the crisis on Rikers. I'd like to know how that's being implemented on the ground, and how many people he's managed to keep out of Rikers Island since he made those diseases.

Brian Lehrer: Corey Stoughton, attorney-in-charge of the Legal Aid Society's Criminal Defense Practice Special Litigation Unit. Thank you so much for joining us today, as troubling as the segment has been. Thank you.

Corey Stoughton: Thank you, Brian.

 

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