Lessons From Rikers Island
The jail is a microcosm of everything wrong with America’s criminal-justice system—but may also offer a model for how it can be righted.
About 18 months ago, there seemed to be a growing national consensus about the imperative of criminal-justice reform. There was rare bipartisan agreement on the scale and scope of the challenges America’s incarceration crisis presents. While it seems that federal momentum for reform has slowed—if not reversed, as of late—it’s still possible to take meaningful steps toward justice locally.
Several weeks ago, the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform—of which I was a member— the closure of Rikers Island, the 8,000-person jail in
