Pleading Guilty To Be Free Sooner: Rikers Inmates Would Do Anything To Leave

Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau discuss the horrific conditions inmates face at Riker's Island.

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I have to say too that there were moments that were just so and I want to Circle back to this but sometimes it's really just shocking to hear a prisoner talk about an experience. And then a former you know not necessarily I mean some of the guards they don't like to be called guards but one of them but you know a former commissioner just basically like yeah no that's what we wanted to do. I mean something to that effect. Like where the brutality just seemed to be shocking. But Revenge tells us will you give us just some broad statistics for people about Rikers. I'm not sure that necessarily nationally everyone is aware of just what kind of place this is. Yeah, absolutely so just the geography itself it's on you know on the East River. There's one sort of public bus that takes you there. And there's one bridge that gets you there as well. Like the bus goes over this bridge. and it's away from the courthouses in New York City so you know that geography is one of the big issues that are the driving forces behind the kind of close records plan. as well currently there are about 6,000 people locked up there. The overwhelming majority are pre-trial detainees. I think it's over 80 percent. and of that 80-50% of the population is diagnosed with some type of mental illness. Including 16 with serious mental illness. Pre-trial detainees can you expand on that I'm not sure again people nationally are aware of the fact that there are a lot of people housed in Rikers who have not been convicted of anything. And in fact, there are people who have died in Rikers before any kind of conviction or trial. Yeah absolutely I mean pre-trump essentially is that you know they're held up there while their cases are pending and because they can't make it Beyond there's a kind of a big conversation now in New York City about bail reform. That was changed a couple years ago. And you know many of the people there are there because you know some not necessarily as much as it used to be with small amounts of bail. But they're definitely people there who have you know have issues with you know with court appearances. And yeah I mean just overwhelming the number of people who have not been convicted of a crime. And for the people who do stay there the maximum stay is supposed to be a year. Now that actually the state has gone up way up recently because a lot of these cases are the trials and the court hearings are kind of getting dragged out for credit for a multitude of reasons.