Gotham Gazette

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Opinion

Shifting the Lines of Opportunity in New York City


dsh shop rendering

Redesign rendering (photo: mayor's office)


My family has a uniquely American story that offers inspiration -- and cause for local changes to ensure opportunity for all.

My immigrant parents of four kids were determined to achieve the American Dream but did not have access to resources or the opportunity to give their children the material needs that are often associated with being in this country. 

What we did have was resolve and an unyielding faith that anyone could make it in America, if they worked hard enough. 

My parents' foremost concern was their children’s need to receive a high-quality education to avoid relegating them to a cycle of generational poverty. They would often tell us, “Education is the number one anti-poverty program America has ever created, and to make it here, you have to learn." 

But where we lived offered little hope. The town we resided in had one of the worst-performing school systems and was often known for violence, gangs, and children getting into drug-dealing. 

My parents were unwilling to limit their children’s future, taking an extraordinary, and illegal, step to provide us with opportunity. 

The neighboring town was wealthier and had high-quality public schools. When my siblings and I reached school age, my parents enrolled us in these schools by lying about their address, in violation of the law. As immigrants, my parents risked severe penalties to ensure their children would receive a good education. To them, their actions were justified because of service to their kids. 

What was the outcome of their actions? We ended up excelling in school and our personal lives. My older sister became a William Fulbright Scholar and attained a Ph.D. in Psychology. My older brother became a long-haul truck driver, while teaching himself three languages and coding. My younger sister earned a master's degree in economics and has continued pursuing her studies to earn a doctorate in the field.  

Our story of hope illustrates the extraordinary decisions some families have made – and will continue to make – to ensure their children are not forsaken. It is also a story that gets at the heart of structural inequities that exist in New York City today.

Our city is segregated by exclusionary zoning policies -- the drawn school and housing lines -- that ensure the wealthiest have access to valuable real estate and high-quality public education while the working class is fastened to cycles of poverty, crime, and inferior schools. These policies can be eliminated by rezoning and building more housing in areas that have historically fought against it.

Near where I live, no neighborhood better provides an opportunity for change than rezoning Soho and Noho. 

By changing zoning rules in these areas we can create a minimum of 700 affordable homes in an excellent neighborhood with access to great schools. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, over 4,200 New York City schoolchildren lost a parent due to the coronavirus. These children are not only missing an idol, but now have to deal with mental stress, loss of income, and dire consequences of what their future might look like without guidance. 

With rezoning, we can prioritize housing single parents with school-age children and help rebuild their lives by providing homes in a high-opportunity area with access to high-quality schools so current and future generations of New Yorkers can unlock their full potential and lead exemplary lives. 

In a recent study by Citigroup, they calculated that structural racism has cost the United States economy $16 trillion over the last 20 years, and removing these barriers that have held back generations of Americans, could increase our nation’s GDP by $5 trillion over the next five years. 

But what are the true motivations behind keeping these policies in place?  

Let’s be blunt: These policies exist due to greed and prejudice. Individuals who benefit from taxpayer investments, whose tax burden disproportionately falls on the lowest socioeconomic citizens of our city, have weaponized their privilege for their own prosperity. 

The cornerstone of their motivation, never publicly admitted, is to ensure that property values increase to maintain their wealth. They believe that increased development would dilute the value of their property and apply the same reasoning if more people of color were to occupy “their” space. 

That is the purpose of supporting exclusionary policies. It is borne out of greed and racism. 

The murder of George Floyd has awoken an entire movement toward ending racist practices in policing and beyond. It is our moral prerogative to fight those – especially ones that call themselves Democrats and progressives – who are opposed to ending the racist policies that have led to generational inequities. 

Our resolve and unyielding faith must be firmer than those forces that stand in opposition to creating a fairer and more just New York City. Let us rise to this call for change and offer families like mine hope. 

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Denny Salas is a candidate for City Council in Manhattan’s District 1. On Twitter @realdennysalas.

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Our Opportunity to End Solitary Confinement in New York City Jails


sol conf brook

A jail cell (photo: Brook Ward)


This is a year we would all sooner forget. But 2020 can be remembered as the year New York City ended solitary confinement.

Layleen Polanco’s death in 2019 was a tragic illustration of how restricted housing and solitary confinement place people at an additional risk while being moved out of sight from urgent medical care and attention. One year later, there is an imminent opportunity to make lasting changes to the city’s criminal justice system that prevent another incident like Layleen’s from occurring.

In the days following Layleen’s death, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and I called for an end to solitary confinement in our city jails. Even as several elected officials and advocates testified calling for its end at a Board of Correction (BOC) hearing last winter, the rulemaking process was never completed. This year, there is an opportunity to finish this work and we must seize the moment.

In June, Mayor de Blasio announced a task force to end punitive segregation, which stands as the most predominant form of solitary confinement in our city jails. In the coming weeks, the task force is due to issue its recommendations to the Board of Correction for rulemaking. With their depth of experience and expertise, Board of Correction members are well-placed to review the decisions and pass rulemaking. But they must act with urgency to change the current structure.

A 2014 study on the use of solitary confinement in New York City jails found that the majority of individuals who were subject to the practice committed self-harm: placing a person in solitary makes them over seven times more likely to harm themselves and over six times more likely to commit potentially fatal self-harm. Another report by the U.S. Department of Justice found that restrictive housing leads to serious psychological distress, as well as mistrust between staff and incarcerated individuals.

Recently, I co-authored a letter with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams that calls for a new model that focuses on reducing violence and changing behavior. Ultimately, solitary must be replaced with a model that is proven effective to reduce violence and improve outcomes. One model is the Clinical Alternative to Punitive Segregation (CAPS) program, which has been effective in reducing violence and lowering rates of self-harm through programming, therapy, and recreational activities. The Department of Correction’s (DOC) 2019 report shows that both contraband and use-of-force incidents are significantly reduced in CAPS units. CAPS units have also shown a 25% decrease in both self-injuries and injuries from fights.

Another promising model is San Francisco’s Resolve to Stop the Violence Program (RSVP), which lowered recidivism for participants by nearly 50% and reduced violent incidents per year in participating units from 24 to 1.

There are several specifics that must be considered in alternative models. As a starting point, the BOC should end the use of restraint desks in Enhanced Supervision Housing (ESH) units, in which individuals are chained to a desk. These desks are long overdue to be removed and should be eliminated in this process. Second, the DOC should allow legal or advocate representation to be present at disciplinary hearings. Finally, we have to set a higher standard for what qualifies as adequate out of cell time than the state’s standard. I have called for a standard of 14 hours of out of cell time with enhanced services to address violence, but any rulemaking must set a higher standard than the four-hour minimum enshrined in state law.

The next few weeks will be critical for this issue. With action, we can enter a new era of justice and mark 2020 as the year that we ended solitary confinement in New York City.

[Read: Plan for Ending Solitary Confinement in City Jails is Imminent, Board of Correction Chair Says]

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City Council Member Keith Powers represents parts of Manhattan and chairs of the Council’s Criminal Justice Committee. On Twitter @KeithPowersNYC

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Closing Rikers Must Remain A Priority, and We Can Do It Without Building New Jails


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Rikers Island (photo: formulanone)


New York City’s historic commitment to closing the Rikers Island jail complex is in jeopardy. Thanks to an adverse court ruling, a struggling budget, and unfocused political leadership, Mayor de Blasio’s plan to build four new jails at a cost of $9 billion is endangered -- and so is the very idea of closing Rikers. In recent weeks, the discussion over Rikers closure has devolved into debates about real estate, and lost sight of the people and communities harmed by our medieval jail complex and broken criminal justice system.

It’s time to focus on how to close Rikers quickly and responsibly -- and without building new jails. 

When I helped launch the campaign to close Rikers Island in 2016, most people in politics were deeply skeptical, if not outright opposed. But along the way, we built a 180-organization coalition, won over nearly every elected official in New York City, forced a commitment to closure from Mayor de Blasio, and watched the City Council dramatically pass legislation with a timeline for closure.

Our goal on the #CLOSERikers campaign had been threefold:

Shutter the Rikers Island jail complex, an 85-year moral stain on our city.

Dramatically reduce the number of New Yorkers in jail pre-trial, particularly people there simply because they are too poor to pay bail.

Invest in and build up communities most harmed by mass incarceration, so that fewer people get ensnared in the system in the first place. 

Lost in the myriad controversies over the Rikers closure plan have been the significant successes over the past few years. For all the controversy over last year’s City Council vote, it ultimately put about 80% of the Council on the record supporting closure. This year New York City’s jail population reached its lowest point in decades, fewer than 4,000 people. (There are currently about 4,600 due to a recent uptick.)

In 2019, the New York State Legislature passed major reforms to bail (wrongly partially rolled back in 2020), discovery, and speedy trial laws. Investments in community-based “violence interruption” programs are up. Restorative justice programs are taking root in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Each subsequent election for District Attorney -- Brooklyn in 2017, Queens in 2019, Manhattan in 2021 -- has featured more progressive ideas around what criminal justice reform should look like. 

All of which brings us to the real question we should be asking right now: how can we close Rikers without building new jails? There was an aborted version of this debate before the 2019 City Council vote. While I argued then that Rikers should be closed without building new jails, those of us who supported that view didn’t do enough to explain how that would work, and Council members were largely uninterested in listening. Now, with the entire plan in jeopardy, it is imperative that we have that conversation. 

First, we must remind people that we already went through an exhaustive citywide debate about why Rikers Island must close. It is beyond reform, a brutish penal colony that has bucked attempts to “improve conditions” every generation since its founding. Second, we must point out that nearly everyone on Rikers Island is there either pre-trial (legally innocent), for a technical parole violation (things that would not be a crime for regular people), or serving a short jail sentence for a misdemeanor (often petty crimes). Having established that Rikers is a horrible place, and most people currently jailed there are not the dangerous villains stereotyped by some on the right, what are steps we can take to further reduce the jail population, so that we don’t need to build new jails? 

Continue passing legislation to reform the justice system. We’re sending more progressive State Senators and Assembly members to Albany than any time in recent history. Pre-covid, “technical parole violations” were the fastest rising cause of people being jailed at Rikers, and typically represent around 10% of people in our jail system. Let’s fix our long-broken parole system, so that people coming home from prison can actually get back on their feet instead of cycling through our jails over and over again. This will reduce our average jail population by about 700 people. 

Build a real community-based mental health-care program. This is something we all need as New Yorkers, as covid has made abundantly clear. A robust mental health-care system will require significant work to build, but as anyone who has struggled with or seen a loved one struggle with mental health can attest, it will be more than worth it. At Rikers Island, up to 40% of detainees experience mental health issues, and an increasing share have serious mental illness, about 1,100 (or 16%) according to 2019 figures. Finding community-based support for any substantial group of people who would be better served there instead of jail would reduce New York’s jail population by hundreds as well. 

Invest in programs that break the cycle of harm. We already have great programs that work with young people who get in trouble with the criminal legal system, let’s put more resources into them to help more young people get their lives back on track. Right now about 500 people in our jails are 18-21, and many more are in their early twenties. We shouldn’t give up on them. If you’re wondering how to pay for this, consider that we spend approximately $300,000 per person per year to incarcerate someone on Rikers. The money’s there, we’re just spending it on cages.

These are just a handful of ideas to reduce the number of people in jail, while improving public safety. The same City Council members who gave long-winded speeches about their historic vote to close Rikers a year ago should be holding hearings now on how to get this done. Mayor de Blasio should show some humility and re-evaluate his unpopular new jails plan. Community groups fighting so hard to block jail construction should demonstrate their sincerity to closing Rikers by lending their support to reforms in this moment. And as a Manhattan District Attorney candidate, I pledge to cut our jail population by 80% so that we don’t need a new jail in Manhattan.

Closing Rikers Island without building any new jail beds would require cutting our jail population to about 2,300, the existing capacity of the Tombs, Brooklyn House of Detention, and VCBC, the barge in the Bronx. These are all deplorable facilities, and while living conditions there can be improved marginally, in 2021 we must have a robust conversation about what system replaces Rikers Island in the long-term, but it should not be de Blasio’s planned jail towers. 

Closing Rikers is a big deal. We can be the city that shows America the path out of the dark days of mass incarceration, and provide a different model for justice. Let’s make history together.

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Janos Marton was a leader of the #CLOSErikers movement and is a candidate for Manhattan District Attorney. On Twitter @janosmarton.

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