New York City jails can be fixed. It will take time. It will take money. And the recent investments announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the changes requested of the city’s Board of Correction are only a beginning.
In a series of self-congratulatory editorials, The New York Times takes credit for bringing needed attention to conditions at the jails, calls for the appointment of a federal monitor, and identifies the longtime president of the correction officers union as an impediment to reform. But the Times is missing the point. If a federal monitor is appointed, and if Norman Seabrook were no longer the president of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, the problems and failures of the city’s jails would continue to exist.
There have been monitors in the past, and the problems abated but did not disappear. Mr. Seabrook is only the most recent in a long line of colorful union leaders. The problems of the city’s jails have been there for all to see. One wonders where the Times — and other news organizations that discovered Rikers Island in 2014 — have been for the last 20 years. Will they be there for the next 20? Will their interest in the conditions of the city’s detainees continue?
[For more of this story, written by Martin F. Horn, go to https://www.themarshallproject...ief-browder-was-held]
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