Rikers Island, like many New York state prisons, is crowded with people arrested for relatively minor infractions. In 2013, the NYPD arrested over 350,000 people, most for nonviolent crimes, including nearly 8,000 for criminal mischief alone. Advocates have long pushed for reforms to the New York prison system, arguing that Rikers Island and state jails are overcrowded; that it’s too expensive to keep so many people locked up; and that poor people and people of color are jailed in disproportionately large numbers.
[For more of this story, written by Emma Eisenberg, go to http://thephiladelphiacitizen....r-nonviolent-crimes/]
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