The Worst Jail In The Country | Graham Rayman & Reuven Blau | TMR

Authors Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau join the program to discuss their book "Inside Rikers: Stories from the World's Largest Penal Colony" which is a collection of personal accounts from over 130 people whose lives have been impacted by New York City's Rikers Island prison complex. The accounts include those of incarcerated individuals, their relatives, officers, lawyers, and commissioners, spanning from the 1970s to the present day. The book questions the nature of justice in America through the portrait that emerges of the country's largest detention complex. The accounts offer a visceral insight into the despair, brutality, resilience, humor, and hope that exist within Rikers. The book serves as a lesson on the human consequences of the incarceration industry, as calls to reduce the number of incarcerated people and close Rikers grow louder.

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Graham Raymond criminal justice reporter for the New York daily news. ruvane Blau senior reporter for the city. authors of Rikers and oral history. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. This is a really fascinating approach to writing something like this. You have essentially collected as you know basically quotes on various a multitude of different aspects of Life at Rikers from a multitude of different people. Graham let's start with you telling us just giving us a sense of the range of people that you interviewed for this book. Well, we interviewed more than 130 people. We wanted to put the voices of people who were either incarcerated there or worked there at the Forefront. So there are retired correction officers. There are people who are incarcerated. they're relatives of people who are incarcerated. We also interviewed some Commissioner's lawyers who dealt with legal cases that involved conditions and violence at Rikers. As we were trying to get as broad a cross-section as possible so you know you're hearing all these different things you're in different viewpoints and different experiences about the themes. And we wanted to be very intimate down to the ground at ground level rather than 10 000 feet up. I have to say too that there was 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.