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Progressives have wanted to close down Rikers Island for years, viewing the shuttering of the citys jail complexes there as a symbolic blow against mass incarceration. The editorial board of the New York Times, one of the institutions leading the campaign, argued last week that Rikerss worsening problems of decay and violence are more evidence that too many people remain in jail. Unfortunately, the articles analytical errors and unwarranted assumptions culminate in policy recommendations likely to make things worse.

The Times and the conventional wisdom that it represents have already won the argument, in many respects. Over the last few years, the city has delivered a number of the reforms advocates demanded. Since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office in 2014, the jail population has been more than halved. The New York City Department of Correction has dramatically scaled back the use of punitive segregation, also known as solitary confinement. The city has greatly restricted correction officers use of force. Teenage suspects and offenders are now off the island and in less restrictive facilities. And two years ago, de Blasio signed legislation that would shutter the islands jails and replace them with a far smaller, borough-based high-rise jail system in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens.

Yet despite these victories, actual conditions at the jail complexwhich houses nearly 6,000 people, most of them awaiting trialremain horrific. This year, 12 inmates have died in custody, including two men in the last week (though one was not technically on the island). Inmates fester in overcrowded intake areas for days before jail officers assign beds. Medical care and food are scarce. Violence among inmates and between guards and inmates is up.

But in highlighting these inhumane conditions, the Times editorial board misdiagnoses the problem. New York, like the rest of the country, locks up far too many people for no good reason, the editorial asserts. To its credit, the editorial board acknowledges the sharp reduction in the city jail population since de Blasio took office. But it argues that this doesnt go far enough, costing the city millions that it might otherwise save. This last claim reflects a misguided calculation of the per-inmate cost of incarceration, a figure arrived at by dividing the DOC budget by the inmate populationbut much of the departments costs are fixed.

This diagnosis also ignores recent changes in the incarcerated population. Releases of nonviolent or less violent inmates over the past few years have left an incarcerated core that is more violent. Two-thirds of Rikers inmates face violent felony charges. The over-incarceration claim is not only inconsistent with the violent background of many Rikers inmates but also at odds with the de Blasio administrations official explanation for why violence in city jails has gotten so out of hand: that its successful decarceration campaign has left behind a population of harder-to-manage offenders.

Such reforms are likely to continue. Last week, New York governor Kathy Hochul signed into law one of the Timess recommendations, releasing hundreds of convicted felons on parole sent back to jail for technical violations of the terms of their release. The focus on parole violators stems from the charge that parolees had their releases revoked merely for minor violations. But the evidence for this is weak. While data from New York are thin, evidence from other jurisdictions tends to show that many incarcerated parole violators committed multiple infractions prior to revocation, were charged with new crimes that triggered the enforcement of a violation, or chose incarceration over an alternative. An analysis of technical parole violators in Tarrant County, Texas, for example, found that offenders under supervision averaged nearly three technical violations per month over 22 months prior to revocation; that 18 percent of offenders were actually arrested for a new offense while under supervision, but for various reasons were not coded as such in the computerized case management system; and that close to 20 percent of offenders opted to take their time when offered treatment or other alternatives to incarceration when facing revocation.

The editorial board suggests that further decarceration could actually improve public safety outside of jail. To make this claim, the board relies on a single study associating longer stays in pretrial detention with higher recidivism rates later on. What the Times leaves out, however, was that the study found higher recidivism only for low-risk defendants. For high-risk defendants, the study noted, there was no relationship between pretrial incarceration and increased crime, suggesting that high-risk defendants can be detained before trial without compromising, and in fact enhancing, public safety and the fair administration of justice. Releasing these same individuals into New York neighborhoods will carry a significant cost to public safety.

A higher proportion of high-risk inmates is no excuse for jail mismanagement, however. That the share of the jail population at a high risk of violent misbehavior has grown doesnt change the fact that the absolute number of such inmates has fallen. It should be easier to manage seven problem inmates in a group of ten than it is to manage ten problem inmates in a group of 20.

So why are violence indicators moving in the wrong direction at Rikers? The answer probably has more to do with the de Blasio administrations reforms on punitive segregation and use of force, which have functionally handcuffed corrections officers and created a more dangerous environment for inmates and staff alike. The evidence clearly shows that as the citys jails became less restrictive, its inmates became more violent. Between 2014 and 2020, for example, inmate-on-inmate violence jumped nearly 70 percentmuch of the increase happening after the city scaled back solitary confinement. Last week, the president of the Correction Captains Association, Patrick Ferraiuolo, told the New York Post, Were almost at a point where [solitary confinement] is almost non-existent, creating a dangerous environment for not only staff, but inmates who are really just looking to do their time on Rikers Island without any issues. Benny Boscio, head of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, was more pointed in his comments to the Post, saying, Theyve taken away all our tools and now we have total mayhem.

It doesnt require a giant leap to see how this change in the risks faced by defanged correction officers might be related to the staffing crisisone-third of guards are absent on any given daythat is almost surely intensifying the violence problem. Many, including current DOC commissioner Vincent Schiraldi, have suggested that staffing shortages are driven in part by coordinated sick-outs. (That underscores the potential problems associated with strong public-employee union protections that make it harder to discipline officers who dont come to work.)

Rather than grapple with the possibility that violence has worsened as the costs of misbehavior for inmates have been lowered, the Times lays the blame at the feet of bail-reform opponents. Because the bail reform that New York State enacted two years ago, allowing most nonviolent felony offenders to go free without posting cash, was ever-so-modestly rolled back, the editorial board argues, the Rikers Island population is significantly higher thanks to the incarceration of those locked up simply for being poor. The Times offers zero evidence for this proposition. It also ignores the empirical evidence showing that more lenient pretrial-release practices are associated with increases in both crime and failures to appear in court. The proportion of violent felony arrests constituted by offenders with open cases jumped by more than 27 percent in the first nine months of 2020.

De Blasios attempt to show superficial progress on the Close Rikers project has also likely contributed to inhumane conditions and violence in jail. In late 2019, just after signing the four-borough jails plan into law, the mayor pledged to close two jail facilities: the Brooklyn detention complex and one building, Taylor, on Rikers. These two closures show that we are making good on our promise to close Rikers Island and create a correctional system that is fundamentally smaller, safer and fairer, de Blasio said at the time. Not so. The closure of Taylor last year, in particular, has contributed to overcrowding for new inmates going through the intake process. In fact, the mayor actually reversed this closure this week, promising to reopen Taylor as we speak. This dizzying reversal is yet more evidence that neither the mayor nor the city council have thought through the practicalities of the four-borough jail program, which is already two years behind its original schedule of 2026.

Meantime, inmates are on their own.

Nicole Gelinas and Rafael A. Mangual are senior fellows at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editors of City Journal.

Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

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Rikers Island Is a Mess. Progressives Are Misdiagnosing the Problem. - City Journal

WASHINGTON House progressives will have a few chances to hold down the defense budget this week, but its going to be an uphill fight.

The House is set to vote this week on two Democratic amendments to cut the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Acts $740 billion top line. One would reduce it by roughly 10 percent, and another would undo a $24 billion a plus-up the House Armed Services Committee passed earlier this month.

Key Republicans have warned that cutting the NDAA would cost their support, which Democrats likely need to pass the bill. When the House Rules Committee met Monday to screen amendments, the panels top Republican, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, said his party likes the bill as-is.

So long as this bill remains largely in its current form and the funding levels remain where they are, I think you will see overwhelming support from Republicans, Cole said.

On Tuesday, the panel advanced a rule that allows consideration of 476 amendments. Among them:

In 2020, the House and Senate defeated twin measures to reduce the Pentagon budget by 10 percent to address the pandemics economic fallout. Then, Democrats split, with the Senate voting 23-77 and the House voting 93-324.

While Republicans argue President Joe Bidens budget request is inadequate to counter Russia and China, progressives say that addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and other domestic needs should take precedence over larding the Pentagons budget.

We face imminent threats from the COVID pandemic, climate change, growing economic inequality, and systemic racial and ethnic inequities [and] also, domestic terrorism, Lee said. It is time to shift our spending priorities to meet these priorities. I personally support much larger cuts to the Pentagon budget.

On Monday, Democratic leaders House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern and HASC Chairman Rep. Adam Smith said they dont like the Republican increase, but they see themselves as outnumbered.

From my vantage point, I think we spend too much on our military budget, but Im clearly in the minority after listening to everybody here speak today, McGovern said.

At the same hearing, Smith reiterated that he supports Bidens budget but lost his panels vote at markup. There, 14 HASC Democrats voted for the plus-up proposed by HASC ranking member Mike Rogers, R-Ala.

I think Biden budget was right. But you know, I do believe in democracy. We had a vote and I lost, Smith told the panel.

Joe Gould is the Congress reporter for Defense News.

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House takes up progressive-led defense spending cuts this week - DefenseNews.com

Democratic political organizer and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams spoke to an audience of several hundred inside Milwaukees Pabst Theater Wednesday evening, discussing her Wisconsin roots and vision for the future of progressive organizing.

The 2020 election cycle saw Democrats take both the presidency and Senate, as well as retain a slim majority in the House of Representatives. Abrams vision for continuing to build on those successes in 2022 revolves around one central tenet: persistence.

A record number of Americans flocked to the polls in last years election that seemed largely to be a referendum on former President Donald Trump. The result, a victory for now-President Joe Biden, was widely celebrated by Democrats. Padding Bidens victory were Georgias 16 Electoral College votes, which hadnt gone to a Democrat since 1996. Abrams went on to help Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock win US Senate seats a few months later, giving Democrats control of the chamber.

Wisconsins political status as a swing state will again have it in the crosshairs of both parties come next years fall election as Republicans hope to unseat Gov. Tony Evers and Democrats hope to oust GOP Sen. Ron Johnson from his seat and expand their Senate majority.

Milwaukee will be particularly important in those battles. Lack of turnout among the citys Black population during the 2016 election is one of many factors that some have said cost Hillary Clinton the presidency in 2016. Clinton also failed to visit Wisconsin during the general election.

Democrats seem eager to avoid that mistake in the future, having poured immense resources into the state. The Democratic National Committee attempted to host its 2020 convention in Milwaukee until the coronavirus pandemic ultimately forced the party to hold a virtual gathering.

Visits by high-profile progressives like Abrams have indicated a commitment to keep fighting for the Badger State.

Only prolonged social movements, Abrams argued, stand the test of time.

She used the example of health insurance reform. Democrats had worked for decades to pass something on that front before President Barack Obama finally signed the Affordable Care Act into law. According to Abrams, it was the inertia behind the policy that helped it weather multiple attempts at repeal by Republicans.

Voting is not magic, she said, its medicine. She continued the metaphor by reminding those in the audience that when people stop taking medicine, the disease can come back.

Abrams cautioned that while Trump may be out of office, he wasin her minda symptom of a larger problem that needs to be defeated at the polls with consistent turnout from progressives like in 2018 and 2020.

Attempts to curtail voting rights in states around the country have given the organizer cause for concern. Each time elected officials restrict access to the polls, we squander what we could be, Abrams said.

She diagnosed many of the fears on the right as based on Americas changing demographics. Abrams urged progressives to lean into the nations changing identity and to push back on conservative framing of issues.

She castigated President Ronald Reagan for having weakened civic faith. Government is people working together to achieve something larger than themselves, she said.

Abrams was joined on stage by Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes who acted as interviewer and moderator for the night. Barnes is also running to unseat Johnson.

Abrams referenced her personal Wisconsin connection, having been born in Madison while her mother attended and worked at UW-Madison. According to Abrams, her mother made less than a janitor due to her race and gender.

Abrams said money being tight left an impact on her growing up, due in large part to how her parents used their lack of means as a lesson. No matter how little we have, there is someone with less, she quoted her mother and father as having told her. Your job is to serve that person.

While Abrams and her family eventually moved to Gulfport, Mississippi, the drumbeat on the importance of service from her parents never stopped.

Her decision to run for governor of Georgia in 2018the first Black woman to do sowas based on her desire to provide good governance, she said. Abrams ultimately lost the race to Brian Kemp, a Republican who the year before the election used his position as secretary of state to purge hundreds of thousands of names from the states voter rolls.

Being first aint fun, Abrams said. Sometimes you are the first to lose. She went on to say that she is not focused on achieving The First title while running for certain offices, and is instead committed to making sure she is not the last.

That desire is reflected in her work: a commitment to training people of color in political organizing. Abrams said a communitys support of a political goal is predicated on members of that community helping lead the movement.

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In Milwaukee Visit, Stacey Abrams Talks the Future of Progressive Organizing - UpNorthNews

Progressives lawmakers, including Representatives Jamaal Bowman and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have urged President Joe Biden to revive the federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits that will expire Monday for millions of jobless American workers amid the ongoing pandemic.

About 7.5 million unemployed workers will lose all their unemployment benefits and an additional 3 million will no longer receive a $300 weekly boost provided by their state when three federally funded jobless aid programs lapse Monday, according to estimates from the Century Foundation.

"We need to extend the expanded UI for millions of unemployed workers because this crisis isn't over. People are not only dealing with COVID surges; they're dealing with impacts of climate change, from extreme flooding in my district to heat waves and fires in the West," Bowman, a New York Democrat, said in a statement to Newsweek.

A spokesperson for Representative Ayanna Pressley told Newsweek that she has been "pressing to extend unemployment benefits and has been in active conversation with both the White House and Congressional leadership for months about an extension and the need for additional layers of protection for workers and families impacted by the pandemic."

The benefits have previously been renewed after lapsing, but the Biden administration said it will allow them to expire on Labor Day.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said that it's "appropriate" to let the expanded $300 weekly unemployment boost expire on September 6 as scheduled in a letter sent to lawmakers in August. And while the Biden administration has encouraged states to reallocate existing federal funds to continue aid to the jobless, none have moved to do so.

Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush, three members of the "Squad," have already called for extending the benefits. Ocasio-Cortez told Insider the benefits expiration is a "major concern," Omar said a revival of the benefits was "necessary," and a spokesperson for Bush confirmed she supports an extension.

But other prominent progressive lawmakersincluding Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and Representatives Maxine Waters and Pramila Jayapalwho are otherwise outspoken on wealth inequality have remained noticeably quiet on the expiration of the federal jobless aid. According to Insider, the 96-member Congressional Progressives Caucus are still in discussion on whether to press Biden for a revival of the benefits.

Any push to revive benefits will hit a roadblock in the Senate. With a slim majority, all 50 Senate Democrats must vote to pass an extension and moderate Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has said he won't support it. House leaders have also shifted focus to advancing a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill to push Biden's infrastructure plan through Congress.

In renewing the benefits in March, the Biden administration and policymakers had expected that the economy would largely recover from the pandemic by September with an aggressive vaccine rollout. But the unforeseen surge of the highly contagious Delta variant, which now accounts for nearly 95 percent of U.S. coronavirus cases, has impeded the plan.

According to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, 235,000 jobs were created in August, a drastic decline from the 1.1 million jobs created in July and well below economists' projections of 733,000 jobs.

"We're still in a pandemic, and the latest jobs numbers prove that. Doing our part to support Americans right now includes extending expanded [unemployment insurance benefits] and passing the $3.5 trillion infrastructure package to invest in our people and economy," said Bowman.

Newsweek has reached out to representatives for Maxine Waters, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Pramila Jayapal, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for comment. This story will be updated with any response.

This story has been updated with comment from Ayanna Pressley.

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'Crisis Isn't Over': Progressives Push Biden to Revive Unemployment Benefits Amid Pandemic - Newsweek

Why do we have building codes if we arent going to enforce them? Mayor de Blasio styles himself a progressive. But a century ago, the original progressiveswanted everyone to have a safe place to live, regardless of income. In turning a blind eye to tens of thousands of people living in illegal and dangerous apartments, Hizzoner ironically subscribes to a type of pre-progressive caveat-emptor philosophy.

In 1890, muckraker Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives chronicledthe shocking fate of tens of thousands of New Yorkers, mostly poor immigrants and their children, crammed into the inhuman dens of disease-ridden tenements. Even back then, though, New York had a law against this, enacted in 1867, giving people a legal claim to air and sunlight, as Riis wrote. The city just didnt enforce it.

Similarly, 146 people died at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory downtown in 1911 not because New York didnt have laws against locking exit doors, but because the owners didnt follow them.

Both the laws and their enforcement improved, part of New Yorks century-long public-health triumph. Now, were going backward. Eleven people, including 2-year-old Lobsang Lama, drowned in their basement apartments during last weeksflash floods.

Five of the six apartments in which they drowned were illegal. The city had complaints about at least three of these illegal apartments and didnt do much to investigate them.

Most basement apartments are illegal for a good reason: You cant easily escape from them. But Gotham has long ignored illegal dwellings: Last year, three people died in fires in illegal units.

DAs should prosecute owners who endanger their tenants; the owners of these buildings should face manslaughter charges.

But what about the citys culpability? Last week, de Blasio acknowledged that at least 100,000 people, mostly illegal immigrants,live in illegal apartments.

Illegal crowding has helped spread COVID, too, just as it spread infection disease in Riis day. Its a reason why the citys death toll from coronavirus is 403 per 100,000, by far the highest in the country.

But the mayor doesnt plan to do anything about it.

Sure, he made an empty gestures, saying that next time we have a flash flood, the city will tell people to evacuate such apartments temporarily. How? A flash flood, by definition, comes quickly.

One answer to this humanitarian crisis is to build more housing.

Yet property owners already have the option of upgrading their basement apartments. They dont do it, because such upgrades would make the apartments too expensive for their tenants. Trying to make an illegal basement apartment up to code is very difficult physically, very costly, the mayor said last week.

Why cant the tenants afford legal, safe housing? Because they supply New Yorks illegally cheap labor. Black-market workers earn below the minimum wage, and often toil in unsafe working conditions.

These are the people who die in preventable construction disasters, paid by the day, with no workplace-safety protections, as well as the people who struggle through floodwaters to bring restaurant customers their hot food in a historic storm, for cheap.

Legalizing long-term immigrants they arent going anywhere, after all would give them some leverage over exploitative landlords and employers.

Except it wouldnt solve the problem. We would quickly import a new cohort of undocumented immigrants, unprotected from wage, housing and workplace laws, because the city depends on cheap labor.

De Blasio loves to be virtuous about the citys $15 minimum wage, as well as mandated sick leave, but the only reason any of this works is that hundreds of thousands of people toil in the second-tier, basement-dwelling economy.

New York City is full of failure to enforce the law. Vending licenses, for example, enable lawful workers to earn a decent living, but they dont work if the city has tens of thousands of illegal street vendors competing against them.

New Yorks progressives want their apartments cleaned and renovated, their children watched and their food delivered hot and fast, and they love to romanticize the churro lady but they dont want to think about the people drowning in the basement.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor of City Journal.

Twitter: @NicoleGelinas

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Flooding of illegal units belies NYC progressives' self-righteous claims - New York Post