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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Coming up later this hour, we are going to see if we can go live to Mayor Eric Adams making an announcement at Citi Field that we expect to exempt professional athletes and performers from the city's vaccine mandate that otherwise applies to anybody who works in person in any public or private sector job in New York City. The playoffs are coming up for the Nets. The Major League Baseball season is about to start with all the economic impact of that, but is it right to exempt only professional athletes and performers? If the cast is exempted, the crew shouldn't be exempted?

It seems like it wouldn't be of a Broadway play, let's say, and a judge might be exempt, but the hot dog vendor on Tier 3 wouldn't? We're going to see what the mayor says. He's got an announcement scheduled for 11:30. Then, we're going to get a public health-focused reaction to it, so that's coming up. Right now we turn to Rikers where last week yet another person died while in the care of New York City. Herman Diaz was the third person to die this year at Rikers. He was 52. Early reports say the cause of death was choking on an orange. There was no correction officer nearby to help him.

Also, last week, Riker's federal monitor the oversight body put in place in 2015 because of ongoing problems there released yet another report, and the prognosis is as dire as any previous report. Some choice lines, you ready for these? "The jails remain unstable and unsafe for both inmates and staff due in no small part to unacceptable levels of fear of harm by detainees and staff. The department's attempts to implement the required remedial steps have faltered and in some instances regressed. Use of force incidents have risen 200% since 2016. In January of 2022," the report says, "approximately 30% of the workforce did not come to work or were on modified service.

It also says, "With each new mayoral administration, the department restarts the clock of reform, and initiatives built on solid correctional practice are revised or abandoned before benefits are ever realized." Wow, right? Again, those are findings from the federal monitor, a body put in place in 2015. That last point about leadership constantly changing hands is particularly relevant to my next guest. Bill de Blasio is the Correction Commissioner from last spring to this winter when Eric Adams took office. Vincent Schiraldi as an advocate to end technical parole violations, he was widely seen as the most progressive person to have the position of Correction Commissioner.

He butt-heads, some of you will remember, with the Correction Officers Union when he tried to tamp down on officer absences and unexcused sick days, one of the things cited there in the federal monitor report. That sentiment was reversed with Eric Adams's new pick of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina who quickly rolled back restrictions on sick leave and fired the department's top internal investigator. We've not had Commissioner Molina on yet, but hopefully will soon.

In the meantime, with me now to talk about the current state of Rikers today, what he learned from his brief service, and how proposed changes to the bail reform lives could further exacerbate the crisis, is Vincent Schiraldi former commissioner of both the New York City Department of Probation and Correction and co-director of the Columbia University Justice Lab. Professor Schiraldi, welcome back to WNYC.

Vincent Schiraldi: Thanks for having me on, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Have you read the latest monitor report? Did anything jump out at you, one of the lines that I read, or anything else that you think is the biggest takeaway for the general public?

Vincent Schiraldi: Yes. This has been decades in the making, and I don't want to pile on a department that's so beleaguered or the commissioner, but yes, there definitely were a few things that jumped out. One of the things that I was surprised by was the monitor used some pretty sharp language about the lack of forthrightness coming from the department.

I've heard that from several reporters. There was an article in the Daily News Sunday by Graham Rayman about absences and people calling out sick. He had gotten a spreadsheet from the department through a request that he made and it consistently omitted the number of people out sick on Fridays, which was a big spike in people calling in sick.

That's worse. Nobody should be expected to fix all these problems in three months that have been decades in the making, but the way to get out from under consent decree with a federal court is to run a constitutional jail, not to hide information.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we can't say that there would have been a correction officer in any particular spot in any particular moment, but if there's this ongoing staffing shortage and it's getting worse on the current administration's watch, do you want to at least express concern that the death of Mr. Herman Diaz, the third person to die this year at Rikers, aged 52 as it was reported, the cause of death was choking on an orange and there was no officer nearby to help him, might this situation have contributed to his death?

Vincent Schiraldi: Yes. We have to be careful when we talk about staffing crises because there's this ample staff, it's just they're not coming to work and some of the ones who come to work aren't actually doing the job of being a correctional officer. I found that during my time there, double-digit people died during my time there as well. I don't want to act like this is a new problem caused by the new administration. This is a problem and it's a terrible problem. It's a heartbreaking problem. Many of those deaths seemed to be connected to either an unstaffed post or somebody working a triple shift. People are exhausted, and they have a very difficult time doing any job.

Making you a cup of coffee, cutting your hair, never mind a complex job of being a correctional officer, two or three shifts into work. I think it's a crisis. It's a crisis that's resulting in some very serious harm to people.

Brian Lehrer: Well, how surprised are you that the policies that you implemented trying to crack down on officer absences and unexcused sick days was partially reversed by Mayor Adams' Correction Commissioner Commissioner Molina, who, as I understand it, rolled back some of the restrictions on sick leave, and then fired the department to stop internal investigator, Sarena Townsend, who had raised alarms?

Vincent Schiraldi: Yes. I think if you took a fair look at the problems of Rikers Island and the violence and people being out sick that aren't out sick, tripled on staff posts, deteriorating conditions, it's hard to imagine that the first day's most prominent policy changes would be firing the top investigator and giving people more time to be out sick because I find that very, very troubling. Now, there may be a plan to fix it all that I don't know about. Nobody's consulting with me, but that was an odd way to come out to the gate and really suggested capitulation to two very high-level union demands, whether that comes from the Commissioner or City Hall who knows, but they wanted Sarena fired.

They used to chant her name at their rallies, and they wanted more time to be able to be out sick when they claimed they were sick.

Brian Lehrer: Why would it be in the interest of Mayor Adams to capitulate to the union more than you and Mayor de Blasio did?

Vincent Schiraldi: He had big support from the unions, but you're going to have to ask Mayor Adams that one, but it's really a lot of elected officials in New York. What is the Corrections Officers Union with the numbers you just talked about, 30% not available to work-

Brian Lehrer: Crazy.

Vincent Schiraldi: -have unlimited sick leave? That's not Mayor Adams. That's mayor's back-- Who knows when that started. I've never talked to a Corrections Commissioner who didn't complain about unlimited sick leave. Corrections uses it more than other departments. I was there. The officer of labor relations told me that NYPD which has unlimited sick leave had 3% of its staff out sick. FDNY had 6% of its staff out sick, they have unlimited sick leave. At that point, we had 20% of our staff out sick, so it's yes, unlimited sick leave, but [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: It's in the collective bargaining agreement.

Vincent Schiraldi: Yes. That's going to be a challenge and that's a challenge above the pay grade of Commissioner Molina. You're going to hear elected officials talk about how terrible conditions are. Well, those elected officials can do something about that.

Brian Lehrer: Because they sit across the table when it comes to contract time. I mentioned that our following segment after you is going to be about Mayor Adams selectively relieving performers and pro athletes of the vaccine requirement. Do you have any reason to believe that the staffing shortage at Rikers is caused to any meaningful degree by the vaccine mandate that some didn't want to follow?

Vincent Schiraldi: It's like an onion. There's a whole bunch of reasons. Some of them are totally legitimate, by the way. First of all, some heroes come to work every single day and came to work every day during the pandemic even though they knew they were walking into a violent environment and even though they knew they might be working a triple. Let me just start with that-

Brian Lehrer: [inaudible 00:11:01] [crosstalk].

Vincent Schiraldi: - because it's easy to forget that.

Brian Lehrer: [unintelligible 00:11:02].

Vincent Schiraldi: Yes, some people are sick, they were injured at work or they're just sick, and they should get healthy and come back to work, or if they're unable to function as a corrections officer, they should retire or medically separate or get disability. Whatever the normal process is, they should get that. Then, some people are faking and they should come back to work. They should be ashamed of themselves for doing that and they should get back to work.

We know this because there were three times as many people out sick on holidays as regular days. There are not three times as many people sick on the 4th of July as on the 4th of June, and that's why we don't know what the sick numbers were on Fridays when the media asks for it because Fridays was a big day to call out sick so you didn't get stuck with a triple. It's cyclical, right? The more people that [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls. We can take a few phone calls for the previous correction commissioner Vincent Schiraldi, 212-433-WNYC about the ongoing and I think we can say fairly worsening crisis at Rikers Island. 212-433-9692. Anybody on Rikers invited to call, anybody not on Rikers invited to call 212 433 9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Theoretically, Professor Schiraldi, the judge overseeing the federal consent agreement or judgment with the city on Rikers Island could order a full federal takeover of the city jail. Would something specific precipitate that, and in your opinion, might that be a good thing for everyone at this point?

Vincent Schiraldi: Yes, so the federal judge in Hines County, Mississippi, which is Jackson, has indicated he's going to be ordering a receivership down. It's a very similar case. It's about the same length of time, about seven years, and I think that was an accumulation of things. It wasn't one thing. It was a consistent failure to remediate the issues that the consent decree raised, and in fact, things were getting worse and worse, which should sound very familiar. That's pretty much been the history of the Nunes seat in New York. I think it needs to be seriously considered by the plaintiffs, seriously considered by the federal judge, even seriously considered by the city.

There are many things that have grown up over the years, unlimited sick leave is one of them, real difficult disciplining folks for awolling and being sick or others that are so arcane, so difficult to undo. The crisis is so bad that that combination of factors might indicate the court should get more heavy-handed, more involved, and whether that's issuing orders that aggregate a bunch of these things that are in the way of reform or creating a receivership and just taking it over I think is totally worth discussing and I think it's the right thing for you to be bringing up.

Brian Lehrer: Though, some might be thinking it's the feds who run the metropolitan correctional center, that's where Jeffrey Epstein died, and the one in Brooklyn that had no heat part of this winter. How much could conditions actually be expected to improve with federal control?

Vincent Schiraldi: Right, well, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is one of those things, not the particular federal judge on this case, but yes, I think that's right, there's no magic answers here. There's no buttons to push. The staffing issues are all over the country. They're definitely true in the Federal Bureau of Prisons where teachers and doctors have to serve as corrections officers if there's not enough corrections officers that come to work that day, so nobody's immune for this.

Look, there's not enough people to serve lunch at cafeterias right now. Everybody's resigning and that's true in corrections both by resigning, 800 people, according to the monitor, resigned between August and January, and people being out sick.

Brian Lehrer: There was a city council hearing on the conditions at Rikers yesterday. I want to play a clip of city council member Carlina Rivera, speaking at that hearing and laying the problems at the feet of the department's leadership.

Carlina Rivera: The department's failure to manage its staff is directly linked to the perilous breakdown of safety and security, as well as soaring rates of violence and use of force.

Brian Lehrer: Professor, and I guess people who are former commissioner sometimes still get called commissioner, so commissioner, as she says, as well as soaring rates of violence and use of force and perilous breakdowns of safety and security, for listeners who haven't heard some of these stats, I read that there were 48 stabbings or slashings at Rikers in January alone. For people not familiar with Rikers, how is there even the opportunity for people locked up in jail, even if there's a staffing shortage, to stab and slash each other that much, and would 48 stabbings and slashings in one month, January, be unusually high?

Vincent Schiraldi: That's an extraordinarily high number. Last year was extraordinarily high. It was over 400. The previous years were around 100, 140 I think was two years ago, so we're more than triple.

Brian Lehrer: It jumped from 100-something to 400-something in a year during the pandemic?

Vincent Schiraldi: Correct, and 48 would in one month would put you on course, hopefully not, for even higher numbers. That's extraordinarily high numbers. People shouldn't be getting stabbed in correctional facilities surrounded by law enforcement officials. Now, why it happens is again, there's multi reasons, but I'll be quick. One of them is the place is falling apart. It rains, and there are puddles for days. Doors don't lock. You can kick doors open in a correctional facility, hundreds and hundreds of doors don't lock. People are in extremely hot cells in the summer because there's no air conditioning and people have died in those cells. Lots of physical plant problems.

One of those physical plant problems is stuff is just fall off the wall. Plexiglas can be ripped off the walls or ripped off windows and sharpened and turned into a shiv, pieces of metal can be. People do that. In part, they do that because getting to the other issue, there's no correctional officer in their unit. If there was no correctional officer in your unit and you were sleeping in a dormitory with 30 other people, you might have a shiv stuck under your pillow to keep yourself safe. People tell us that. "I don't actually want to harm anybody. I just want to keep myself safe." Then, me and you bump into each other on the way to the bathroom by accident, and instead of an argument or a glare, it's a slashing or a stabbing.

Then, to add on top of it, we have search teams that are supposed to go around periodically and randomly search so they can find contraband like that. People keep getting pulled from the search teams so that they can relieve somebody else who's working a triple or staff an unstaffed post, and so there's a lot of cyclical nature to this, and the more scary and dangerous it is, the more people are inclined to call in sick, even when they're not sick.

Brian Lehrer: You ready for some pushback from a correction officer? Kevin in Rockaway Beach, you're on WNYC with Vincent Schiraldi, the former commissioner. Kevin, thank you so much for calling in.

Kevin: Hey, good morning. It's a pleasure to be on with both of you. I would just like to say that, Former Commission Schiraldi, I appreciate what you say about the people who do come to work. I consider myself one of them but what I will say is that the people who do come to work and the people who aren't coming to work, they are the same people because the people you're talking about this week, or especially during the height of the pandemic, when you're doing 16, 20, 24 hours at a time, it's an unsustainable situation.

You go in two weeks, three weeks like that on no sleep, and then eventually, it's unsustainable, you're going to break down, your body's going to break down. Something's going to give, and then you're going to be out and it's going to be somebody else's turn. It's a very, very bad situation and it's an unsafe situation, and I'll give you a perfect example of just some of the problems we have. I was involved in a use of force. I was an ESO, which means I was on a one-on-one to watch somebody on suicide watch. The B officer was taken off the post to go help escort because of a lack of staffing, while this is going on, another inmate decides he's going to kick the hell out of another inmate.

The inmate's on the floor, the guy's kicking his head in. I didn't have to use any kind of excessive force, grabbed him from behind, turned him around, brought him to his cell, put him in his cell, closed the door. Filled out the use of force report, et cetera, all that. No problem. Next thing, stamped to administration. Oh, there was a door cracked, which you know they don't work, while the use of force was going on. No punishment for the use of force because it was clean, but at that time, just a coinkydink, that on the camera, they decide they're going to hit me four vacation days for an open door when I'm an ESO trying to cover two posts.

Another thing I would like to say also-- or I have a question actually that I'm genuinely interested in. Every other county in this state does indirect supervision and they don't have the same problems we have. Why do we have direct supervision when we're in this emergency? Also, I hope this isn't going to come out the wrong way, but I can't ever imagine a police commissioner or a fire commissioner as their first act hiring an ex arsonist or an ex-bank robber to be a deputy commissioner. I don't know why it happened in our department. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: All Right. Thank you for your call, Kevin. That's a lot. Professor, commissioner, give him your best response.

Vincent Schiraldi: It was a sad ending. I was in agreement with a lot of it up to the end because I hired Stanley Richards, who's the executive vice president of The Fortune Society and himself was formally incarcerated, to be my first deputy in charge of training and programming. Stanley is the most qualified person to be in charge of those things. He is also an example of exactly what we wanted incarcerated people to do, which is to work hard, get an education, turn their lives around, and make something of themselves.

For some folks that were in corrections, they could never get past that, but there were others, corrections officers themselves, and we've got to be careful not to stereotype, who really supported Stanley and saw it as a good thing. Folks are entitled to really different opinions about that. I think his example is a really good and interesting one in terms of the kinds of things that inadequate staffing or not enough people coming to work does. Here he is he's got a specific duty to watch a single person and his other staff member on the floor gets pulled away and there's a fight and he's got to go there to break that fight up. I think that is exactly the kinds of things that happen.

I do disagree with what he said about this week's person who comes to work is next week's person calling in sick. If the people who were out came to work, and there are 1700, 1400 people not at work, another 600, 700, 800 on light duty, if they just did their work, if half of them did their work and just were a correctional officer when they were supposed to be, then we would have no triples and we would have no unstaffed posts. The temperature of the place would subside considerably. People wouldn't be forced to work overtime. There was a time when people used to have to sign up on a list because they wanted to get overtime. Now people are running away from overtime.

We got to get back to that point and part of that is creating a better environment so that staff come to work and feel like they're doing good things when they get to work, and part of it is discipline.

Brian Lehrer: We have time for one more call, then we're going to go to Mayor Adams' announcement taking place right now at Citi Field, changing the in-person employee vaccine mandate, but only for professional athletes and performers. We will talk about what the mayor is actually saying right now, who it will actually apply to and not, and the fairness of that, and the public health implications of that. That's coming right up, but we're going to take one more call for former correction commissioner Vincent Schiraldi on the crisis at Riker's Island. Anna in lower Manhattan, Anna, you on WNYC. Hello.

Anna: Yes. Hi. Thank you for having me in your show, Brian. I just heard Kevin talking about the unsustainable situation on Riker's Island. The problem is that it's been a very bad and unsafe situation for decades. It's not just starting now. It didn't start last year. It's just a systematic problem. It's just getting worse. We can talk and talk for the next decades about the failures of Department of Corrections, but are we sure we want to keep talking about it for the next decades? No. It's time to close Rikers. It's time to abolish Department of Corrections once and for all. DOC has proved for decades not to be able to function. They are a disturbing department and it cannot be fixed.

Yesterday, I did testify at the city hall criminal justice meeting that was yesterday [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: The community hearing at City Council, yes.

Anna: Yes, the hearing, and I did express that our taxpayer money's been wasted and wasted on this department. The city of New York had to pay 12.5 million to settle a case over illegal strip searches in the New York City jails.

Brian Lehrer: I've also seen that New York City spends more money per incarcerated person than any other city in the country and by a lot. Anna, as we're almost out of time, what's your solution? Let's say they succeed in breaking up Rikers Island. That would mean county-based jails, borough-based jails. You say end the Department of Correction, somebody's got to [crosstalk]--

Anna: I support the borough-based jails.

Brian Lehrer: You support the borough-- but who would oversee them if [crosstalk]--

Anna: Yes, I do because we need a humane place for people who are incarcerated. They cannot be punished and live in a dungeon along with the other staff members who work there, nobody deserves that. Not the people who work there, not the people who are incarcerated. We need humane systems for them near the courts. I am [crosstalk]--

Vincent Schiraldi: I agree with Anna on that. Both the staff and the incarcerated people need and deserve a decent and humane place to be. I think everything should be on the table except really small, incremental changes. I think those should be off the table right now because that is not what's going to fix this place. [inaudible 00:27:40] [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: Right. Of course, there is a plan to close Rikers and go to borough-based jails and it's being difficult to get enough buy-in from local communities to locate those borough-based jails, which I guess is delaying that gradual closure. I want to ask you one final thing and then we are out of time, the rollback of bail reform that Mayor Adams wants, it would allow judges to incarcerate more people at Rikers Island presumably. If there's already a staff to incarcerated person ratio problem, how much do you think that would exacerbate it?

Vincent Schiraldi: I definitely think it will exacerbate it both numerically in terms of the actual impact, but also the impact it'll have on the courts. The more elected officials posture on this issue, the more timid judges get in terms of looking at people for alternatives to incarceration. We saw some of that as vitriol rose when I was there. I agree with a lot of what Anna said. Camden, New Jersey had problems, serious problems with their police department, and they created a whole new department. I think we need to look at that.

I think we need to look at receivership and a federal court takeover. I think we also need to put lots more programs to keep people productively occupied at Rikers and to divert people who shouldn't be there into the kinds of supportive programs that will help them succeed in the community and not have to go to Rikers in the first place. There's lots of work to be done in this quarter.

Brian Lehrer: We'll have to leave it there with Vincent Schiraldi, former commissioner of the New York City Department of Probation and Correction and now back to co-director of the Columbia University Justice Lab. Thank you so much for joining us, a really troubling conversation, but we really appreciate that you're staying involved with it even after leaving office.

Vincent Schiraldi: Thanks for having me on, Brian.

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