It’s Not Impossible: How NYC Can Transform Jail Conditions

In a city that has long vaunted its accomplishments in making life better for its residents, its jails stand as a startling and unmitigated failure. Over the past three years, 33 people have died in the jails, and its past and present reveal one horrendous abuse after another, as a recent Gothamist investigative series on rape in the jails has detailed.

Reform efforts in the 1920s to move from the dark, crowded and unsanitary conditions of city jails to an island in the East River with space and fresh air failed. And a reform effort over the past decade, aimed at moving back to better designed jails in the city centers, has stalled. A long line of federal consent decrees, covering the terms of five mayors and 25 correction commissioners, has not fixed the problems. Levels of violence are astronomically above the 2015 conditions that a federal consent decree was aimed at curing. Today, it seems an impossible mission to return even to those 2015 unconstitutional levels.

Is there any way out? Vital City, Columbia Law School, CUNY Institute of State & Local Governance (ISLG), John Jay College of Criminal Justice and NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service will bring together a virtual panel consisting of some of the leading experts on jails, their operation and their reform.

Introductory Remarks: Stanley Richards, President & CEO of The Fortune Society, Former First Deputy Commissioner of NYC Department of Correction

Register for this event.