How NYC Can Transform Jail Conditions: A Panel

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.

A reform effort over the past decade, aimed at moving back to better designed jails in the city centers, has largely stalled. 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 brought 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

Moderator: Jan Ransom, Reporter, New York Times

Panelists: Stan Brezenoff, former first deputy mayor City of New York, former chair of the Board of Correction

Jordan Hyatt, Drexel University Criminology and Justice Studies Professor, Director of the Center for Public Policy, and co-PI of the Scandinavian Prison Project

Michael Jacobson, Executive Director of CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance, former NYC Correction Commissioner

Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia, Managing Director of Justice Initiatives, Chicago Beyond