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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. WNYC George Joseph's joining us now with new reporting about the ongoing crisis at Rikers Island. Remember Rikers is not a prison, it's just a jail primarily for people not out on bail, who are being held only until their cases are resolved. This is before they've been convicted of anything, yet George reports nearly a third of the people on Rikers today will be spending their second Thanksgiving there, just awaiting trial or whatever, plea bargain. That's more than 1000 New Yorkers.

In fact, over 5,400 people were held at Rikers Island as of last month, and that's up almost 1,000 from last year, even though this is supposed to be the de-incarceration era in general, and despite the pandemic risks in congregate settings like a jail. The crisis this year, as most of you know, has included overcrowded detainment cells, inadequate access to medical care, increased self-harm, and over a dozen deaths throughout the system this year alone, a higher rate than usual.

On the backlog, contributing to the overcrowding, George reports that over 52,000 cases were pending in the court system as of last month, an almost 40% increase since the beginning of last year, since the beginning of the pandemic. While the pandemic certainly contributed to this surge, he reports, it's largely understood that systemic issues underpinning the city's criminal court system also need to be addressed. Joining us now is investigative reporter with WNYC's Public Safety Unit, George Joseph.

You can find his reporting, by the way, at gothamist.com, the new article is called Crisis at Rikers: How Case Delays are Locking Up More and More People For Years Without Trial. Just hit Gothamist yesterday. Hey, George, good to have you back on the show.

George Joseph: Good morning, Brian. Great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with one person's story to humanize this, Rafael Negron, a man being detained at Rikers. How long has he been there?

George Joseph: Rafael Negron has been there for over a year, almost 13 months now. He's a man who's been charged for a fatal shooting, a murder in Inwood last year. It's a pretty simple case. He was standing in a courtyard, dealing marijuana. He gets into a fight with the person that approaches him. He claims he was threatened. It's on video, you can see him shooting the man. He and his attorney claimed the man brought the gun after they had a tussle over it, and he said it was an act of self-defense.

What he wants is a trial to make this argument to a jury in the hopes that he will be able to get back to his family. He's not interested in plea deals, he just wants to quickly exercise his right to trial, but for over a year now, his case has barely moved forward because of the larger problems in our court system.

Brian Lehrer: "Justice delayed is justice denied," somebody said. Why is this happening in his case?

George Joseph: In October, he was supposed to have a hearing, but the court administrators emailed his attorney saying, "Hey, sorry, the judge in this case is too busy. We don't have the court staff available to hold this hearing, and the judge's calendar basically is booked right now." It speaks to a larger problem, which is that during the pandemic, when the court system was barely holding any trials, you had thousands of criminal cases piling up in the system. Even when in 2021, we start to reopen the courts partially, we're not anywhere close to that capacity that we were at pre-pandemic to hold trials.

There's a bottleneck that has been created for the last two years, causing thousands of cases to build up without moving forward, and that slows down the whole system for everyone, including defendants like Mr. Negron.

Brian Lehrer: Isn't this what Mayor de Blasio says over and over again and keeps getting berated for about the cause of the population spike at Rikers. He's saying, "Open the court system. It's safe now, you can open the court system. We have a court backlog, that's why we have the crisis at Rikers." That may not be the only reason, but from the story you just told, it sounds like he's right.

George Joseph: I'll say a couple of things about that, Brian. One is as you mentioned, this is not the only factor fueling the increase in population at Rikers that you referenced at the top of the show. As we reported several months ago, judges started changing their behavior in terms of setting bail more frequently, in many cases, in violation of New York's bail reform law. That has been a major factor also fueling the increase in the population. Yes, the mayor is right that the case backlog and resulting case delays have also been a factor and fueling the increase in population, which has helped get Rikers out of control even further than it already was.

However, what court administrators point out is, "Look, what are we supposed to do?" Obviously, the pandemic was going to create a backlog. Right now we can't go to full capacity because of social distancing restrictions. Remember, Brian, in court, because of due process rights, the courts can't enforce a vaccine mandate. It's not like Madison Square Garden. They also have to maintain social distancing rules. The courts have said, "If we want to use our space most efficiently, we need to relax our social distancing rules to move from six feet to three feet, but in order to do that, we need a green light from the state."

The state says, "While we're waiting for a green light from the CDC, the other option would be to give the courts more space." The city claims they've offered that to the courts. When we asked the courts what space they had been offered, the court said, "The city just offered us some school buildings for two months during summer break for Grand Jury proceedings. We would lose the space, it's not enough time to get it ready, and then even if we did get it ready, wouldn't be enough to cover the whole system, and make it more to catch up with the existing backlog that's built up since the pandemic."

It's unclear if our city leaders are really willing to take us on birth, just talking at press conferences and blaming each other.

Brian Lehrer: It's difficult, obviously, from everything you just said, to coordinate the different players in government and the legal system to speed up the court process, but is somebody saying it's doable?

George Joseph: What some policy experts have argued is instead of having these different agency heads sniping at each other in the media, what a leader should do, whether it be the mayor or the governor or a court administrator, is bring all of them together, all the major criminal justice institutions. The public defenders, the prosecutors, the Department of Correction, the judges, all these groups have a role to play here and say, "Look, you all, what do we need to do to make our system function better?" There's a lot of operational changes that could help address this problem.

Getting corrections officers to be able to come to work so that there's enough staff to get people from Rikers to court on time. Figuring out ways to move along cases such that people like Mr. Negron aren't missing their court dates. Having greater court capacity when it's needed. The problem is these different institutional actors, understandably because of the adversarial nature of our system, have clashing incentives.

Whereas prosecutors may support more court parts to be able to get more guilty verdicts or get more guilty pleas and send people to prison, public defenders may want more court parts to put people into mental health programming or drug rehabilitation programming. Some people, especially on the left public defenders, don't want to necessarily speed up the process at all, because they feel like their clients will get short shrift. They need time to develop relationships, find evidence, and so understandably, they're concerned about the effect speeding things up could have on their due process rights.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that's interesting. Even the defense attorneys see advantage for their clients in these delays, which we're generally lamenting as justice delayed.

George Joseph: Depending on the scenario, especially for those who are not in jail right now, what defense attorneys and prosecutors will tell you is, sometimes the longer a case goes on, the more advantages so the defense because witnesses will lose interest, victims, for example, in domestic violence cases, may not want to move forward after a long time. It depends on the case, though.

Brian Lehrer: George Joseph from our Public Safety Unit, our investigative reporter is with us on his new story about the overcrowding at Rikers being caused to a meaningful degree by the long backlogs in getting cases to trial that over 1,000 people at Rikers right now are spending their second Thanksgiving. Even as they are not convicted of anything, they're in jail. It's not a prison, it's a jail, which means they're awaiting trial, and it's taking so long. A lot of people are spending their second Thanksgiving at Rikers right now.

We get calls from people on Rikers from time to time. If any of you are listening right now, especially any of you who've been in for a really, really long time and are waiting to get your case heard, maybe like roughly on the ground, you think you're innocent and you really want to go to trial, or anyone else on Rikers who is connected to people on Rikers waiting and waiting and waiting for your trial, for their trial, 212-433 WNYC. Maybe we'll get a couple of stories to help us report the larger story, 212-433 WNYC, 433-9692.

George, let's go back to Rafael Negron to continue to humanize this through an individual story. You report he's a Type 1 diabetic. What has his medical care been like at Riker's, especially in these months of overcrowding and short staffing?

George Joseph: Yes, Brian. As you mentioned, the Department of Corrections has had major staffing issues. Up to a third of staff have not been available to work with detainees, sometimes because they're calling out sick, sometimes because they're on a medically monitored status that allows them not to work with detainees, and sometimes because they've just simply gone AWOL over the last year. The Department of Correction has tried to get a handle on that staffing issue. Thus far, they have moved the numbers slightly in the right direction, but they've not fully been able to address the issue.

As a result, detainees like Rafael Negron are sometimes missing critical services. When we look through Negron's medical records from jail, what we see is that he's missed dozens of nursing visits. Now, in the paperwork, sometimes corrections officers will say Negron refused to come to visits. However, we found at least one instance where the corrections officers claimed that he had refused to come to a visit, but in actuality, he was miles away at a hospital that he had been taken to two days earlier because he had woken up urinating blood.

We know that there are missed services that are not always the fault of incarcerated people that are happening in Rikers because of the staffing crisis.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, in addition to the potential severity of diabetes inherently, it makes them more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19, if you get COVID-19. That's another reason to be attentive to the health of people with diabetes who are behind bars. You know what, I see that the mother of Rafael Negron is calling in. Obviously, she knew about your story and maybe she knew you were going to be on today. In fact, it looks like a couple of relatives of Rafael are calling. Let's at least hear from his mom, Darlene in the Bronx. Darlene, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling today.

Darlene: Hi, good morning. Well, the crisis in Rikers Island is really, really bad. The medical staff, what my son has been going through in there is an injustice. My son has been in the hospital five times. Right now, my son is in the hospital. He's in ICU because he went into DKA because they're not giving him the proper medical attention that he needs. He needs his sugars checked four times a day, they're not doing that. When he gets sick and he tells them, "I feel sick, I need to go into the hospital," they either ignore and tell him he has to wait, and he has to wait hours for them to do the paperwork for them to be able to take him to the hospital.

All that time, while you're doing paperwork and everything, my son could collapse and die right there waiting because y'all haven't been giving him the medical attention that he needs. Then instead of rushing him to the hospital, you're not doing that. Now my son collapsed and they took him and he was in ICU. Five times he's been in the hospital already because of this. We tried to go so they could lower his bail on medical conditions so he could be out here and get his proper medical needs while he is waiting for his trial, they denied that. They denied to lower his bail.

My worry is my son is not going to make it out of there. I'm going to get a phone call saying my son is dead because of this.

Brian Lehrer: Darlene, do you have any impression? Your concern is for your son, not for like systemic issues in the jail system, obviously. Do you have any impression whether the things you just described are happening because they're short-staffed in the pandemic or because that's just the way things go over there?

Darlene: I think it's both. It's both because when you go in there and you're trying to prove your innocence, they don't see that you're innocent or anything. As soon as you walk in through those doors, you’re guilty, and they treat you like trash. They don't care about you. That's the way the system works there. If you're sick and you're going in jail, God help you, because I'm telling you right now, the way the system works in there, they don't care about you.

It's not only-- Like you said, I'm calling and I'm saying this because of my son and everything, I love my son to death, but everybody's going through that. Whoever got medical issues in there is going through it. They don't care about you. It's not only because of that, the system is messed up in there.

Brian Lehrer: George Joseph, George, I don't if you spoke to Darlene, Rafael's mom for your story, but do you want to say anything or ask her anything here?

George Joseph: Yes. We actually spoke quite a bit for the story. I would just add that the data shows that this goes beyond Mr. Negron's case. Many, many incarcerated people have missed medical visits and basic services throughout this year as the staffing crisis has unfolded at Rikers.

Brian Lehrer: Darlene, thank you for giving voice to your son, for one thing, who it sounds like is in no position to do so himself right now, and to the larger issue from your perspective as the mother of somebody going through this. Good luck to you and your family.

Darlene: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC-FM HD and AM, New York. WNJT-FM 88.1, Trenton. WNTP 88.5, Sussex. WNJY 89.3, Netcong, and WNJO 90.3, Toms River. We are on New York and New Jersey public radio. A few more minutes with George Joseph on the large number of inmates at Rikers Island spending their second Thanksgiving there while awaiting trial. Let's talk to Richard calling in, a defense attorney. Richard, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Richard: Hello. I have a client at Rikers Island, he's been there since October of 2019. He committed a robbery. It's all on tape. It's like a movie shoot. I've been delaying myself, and COVID also caused a delay. Now, he's getting a much better deal than he did in the beginning. The plea went from 10 years down to five years, believe it or not. This is what's happening. A defense attorney like me, who has handled cases for more than 40 years, very serious cases of murders, serial killers, the whole thing, this is why most defense attorneys like me don't have an objection.

We know, at the end, the DAs are so overwhelmed and the court is so overwhelmed with cases that they'll give them a better deal. The District Attorney called me a couple of weeks ago, it's down to five years, my client will take the plea and he'll probably go upstate in January. That's also endemic in the system, and that's the way I've been doing my cases for more than four decades. If I wait a long time, I'll get a better deal.

Brian Lehrer: Are you saying, don't cry too many tears for these delays because a lot of times you’re in the defense’s interest?

Richard: Oh, sure. The care at Rikers Island is now really shabby. It was pretty good before, but since the pandemic and the corrections officers going on their many strikes, has been really bad. My client said, "Sure, I'll take the plea to five years. I want to go upstate because Rikers Island is so bad." Now it's a problem. When the case started in 2019, that was not a problem. He was born with AIDS. I tried to get him out with an ankle bracelet but they refused that. He has serious problems, but he's survived, now through the COVID pandemic. Now, he's very happy he's going to get his five years of which he's spent two and a half years already in jail.

Brian Lehrer: Tell me more about the second part of what you just said. That is about the conditions there that you've experienced or heard about as a defense lawyer, and at least one person in Rikers recently.

Richard: Well, yes, it's getting very bad because there's no staff. I tried to see some of my clients virtually and I sit there staring at a wall. They don't even bring them down, I sit there for an hour. This particular client, I tried to see him last week, this is the third time, and they don't bring him down. Sometimes he can call me on the phone, but the whole system is really breaking down now. It was pretty good up to a certain point because the Correctional Health services would cooperate with, you and they would give medical attention. Now, it's very bad.

He's still okay, he's getting his medication for his AIDS, but the other ones have complained to me, they're not getting anything. They haven't brushed their teeth in five days, haven't taken a shower for a week, and they're moving everybody around, it's causing chaos and confusion. Now, I don't think they want to stay on Rikers Island very long.

Brian Lehrer: Richard, thank you so much for your call, that was very informative. I really appreciate it. Boy, oh, boy, George, I wonder what you're thinking having reported this story. We heard the tension there for a lot of the people who might be in and for whom delay might be in their interest, in terms of legal strategy. It's getting dangerous to their health at the same time.

George Joseph: It's a hard balance that defendants and defense attorneys have to make where-- Their job is to act in the best interest of their client, not the system. That is the criminal justice structure we have set up. If a client can think that they can survive in these horrible conditions at Rikers Island right now, it could well be in their interest. That is something that prosecutors complain about. These public defenders are attacking us and blaming us for this crisis. Here they are, in some cases, using these tactics.

On the other hand, public defenders would point out, "Well, it's district attorneys and judges who are making the bail decisions that are holding people in pretrial detention and can sometimes squeeze people because of how bad the cases are into taking these deals, even if they claim innocence." There's multiple factors and dynamics going on here that can make for a really hard choices for people in the system.

Brian Lehrer: Investigative reporter with WNYC's Public Safety Unit, George Joseph. His new article on Gothamist is called, Crisis at Rikers: How Case Delays are Locking Up More and More people For Years Without Trial. Thanks so much, George.

George Joseph: Thanks, Brian.

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