Follow the successful example of jails and prisons from other states.
One year ago, federal judge Laura Swain determined that conditions in New York City jails had been so bad for so long that the city had to give up control of its own jail system. Nicholas Deml is the remediation manager Judge Swain appointed to help turn things around, working with jail leadership. He will be issuing a report in July that includes recommendations for improving the city’s jails, including the notorious Rikers Island, to the parties involved in longstanding litigation on the issue. A final report will be filed with the court in July and publicly available.
To reduce violence and improve conditions, Deml should consider some of the successes around the country that my colleagues at the Brennan Center for Justice and I cover in our new report. We wrote about states implementing innovative practices in some prisons that are making life safer and more humane for the people who live and work there. The experience of those states can provide a helpful blueprint here.
Our study focuses on prisons in places as varied as Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, North Dakota and South Carolina. It’s true that prisons and jails aren’t exactly the same thing, but they share many of the same problems: the harm that comes with social and physical isolation, along with the constant threat of violence. Jails are largely a local function. They house individuals who have been arrested, those awaiting trial and those serving sentences for low-level offenses, typically for less than one year. Jails often have little to no programming opportunities because the population is supposed to be there for a short period of time. Prisons tend to house those who have been sentenced to more than a year, and typically have more robust educational and programming opportunities like parenting classes, educational instruction and behavioral health support.
The issues plaguing New York City jails for both officers and those who are incarcerated there are pervasive and well known. People who have lived on Rikers Island have said that officers treat them as “less than human.” That cruelty comes in many forms — from the excessive and unnecessary use of force to squalid conditions that include inedible food, a lack of running water, toilets not flushing and more. And the staffing challenges within the New York City Department of Correction aren’t helping. People who have worked on Rikers Island have said that the staff shortages make their jobs more dangerous. While Rikers Island has historically had one of the highest ratios of staff to detainees, since the beginning of the pandemic more than 4,000 corrections officers across the department have left their jobs. This is despite a 70% increase in the number of people incarcerated in the jail system over nearly the same timeframe.
The current operational culture and widespread violence on Rikers Island and across New York City jails — with routine violence against detainees by staff, and a lack of discipline around use of force — is detrimental to everyone it affects. Deml and his team will work with a range of experts to reduce violence and improve conditions, including: the newly appointed Department of Corrections Commissioner Stanley Richards and his department, the Independent Rikers Commission, the Board of Correction, the New York State Commission of Correction, the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, nonprofits, advocates and other experts. The case studies in our report show that culture change requires improving how correctional staff engage with incarcerated people. A focus of Deml’s reforms should be on humanizing these interactions, and making sure that life in jail resembles life outside the jail setting as much as possible. The NYC DOC should help to transform the role of the correctional officer to that of a motivator and role model, not someone who focuses solely on security.
Humanizing interactions with incarcerated residents
Correctional officers need to be trained — and encouraged by department leadership — to understand residents’ mental and emotional needs. This allows staff to better anticipate and prevent security risks, rather than responding after an incident has occurred. This approach is known as dynamic security, and several jurisdictions across the country are embracing this new approach.
As we studied culture change in corrections, we spent time shadowing an organization called Amend, based at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. It’s one of the many organizations working with corrections departments across the country to reduce violence in correctional facilities and instill dynamic security.
Amend knows that poor working conditions for staff, under-investment in training and education and policies and procedures that perpetuate staff stress and trauma can be barriers to improving outcomes for incarcerated people. New York City jails face these same problems. Amend brings correctional officials from Norway, who are trained in more humane practices, to work alongside U.S.-based staff to make improvements in U.S. corrections culture and conditions. When our team visited prisons in North Dakota, Washington state and Oregon, we saw firsthand the incredible impact: The U.S.-based staff are more engaged at work, with higher morale and a greater feeling of safety.
New York City is familiar with Amend. Back in 2019, a delegation of city officials visited Norway with Amend. For some time, there appeared to be some progress and exchanges of ideas. But correctional leadership turnover and the COVID-19 crisis overwhelmed city jails, and hindered this progress.
So how does it work? To help promote culture change within corrections, Amend brings correctional leaders and government officials to prisons in Norway. Line staff also benefit from visiting Norway, where they shadow Norwegian correctional officers, attend Amend-led training programs at Norway’s correctional officer training academy, and learn more about innovative correctional practices. The Norwegians provide real-time feedback on U.S. staff interactions with incarcerated people and guide staff on more effective ways to encourage change. Amend’s training helps correctional officers re-envision their role as public health workers. The program empowers officers to support incarcerated people and their rehabilitation, fostering a more humane and dignified environment by reducing trauma, violence and harm in facilities.
Some states are also implementing dynamic security by establishing specialized prison units for young adults ages 18-25, through the Vera Institute of Justice’s Restoring Promise initiative. Officers in these units receive training in listening and coaching skills, empathy, de-escalation tactics, conflict resolution and motivational interviewing.
In practice, that training can manifest in simple ways. When our team visited such specialized units in North Dakota, we saw Director of Corrections Colby Braun asking incarcerated people we passed in the hallway how their day was going, how a visit with their family was and sometimes shaking hands with the residents. Officers in these units may also, for example, ask questions to explore why a young person is upset, instead of immediately issuing a disciplinary infraction. All these gestures might seem small. But they build on each other to encourage a supportive relationship and communication that’s based on trust, not fear. And they largely don’t happen in New York City jails.
The Scandinavian Prison Project is another unit-based initiative that implements international approaches to incarceration. Researchers from Drexel University and the University of Oslo entered into an agreement with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to create an experimental housing unit at State Correctional Institution Chester, a medium-security, reentry-focused facility near Philadelphia.
The “Little Scandinavia” unit opened in May 2022, and can house up to 64 men. The new staff curriculum includes courses in crisis management, negotiation and communication, suicide prevention and motivational interviewing. And correctional staff eat shared meals with the residents inside these units.
These programs work. The team working with Amend in a high-security behavioral health unit in Oregon reported a mean 73.9% decrease in the rate of total assaults by incarcerated people — either against staff or against other incarcerated people. And an evaluation of two Restoring Promise units in South Carolina found that young adults from these units were 73% less likely to be written up for violence, compared with a control group in the general population. There was also an 83% reduction in solitary confinement stays during the first year of participation in the Restoring Promise units. And Scandinavian Prison Project researchers conducted a prison climate survey which found that Little Scandinavia has fewer disputes than other units at SCI Chester, less misconduct and decreased use of restrictive housing as a form of discipline.
Reflecting outside life in the jail setting
Another key principle we observed across multiple states and write about in our report is the idea that prison life should be organized to resemble community life as much as possible. For example, people behind bars may commute to a job, or personalize their living space with posters and family pictures. This approach is called normalization, and it’s another way corrections staff can establish more humane conditions for residents in their care.
In Pennsylvania’s Little Scandinavia unit, for example, the prison made structural changes to the unit layout and to individual cells to help provide a sense of normalcy. There’s a communal space with plants, couches, a fish tank, a game table, and exercise equipment. And residents can also access a washer and dryer, green spaces outside, and a kitchen that's fully equipped.
Aspects of normalization are also already being replicated in some jail settings. Restoring Promise worked with Middlesex County, Mass., to open a housing unit at their jail. The project included renovations to brighten the space and add communal areas for prayer/meditation, along with a library/study hall. Officers in the unit emphasize the importance of a daily routine with residents. Staff are also trained in the same de-escalation, conflict resolution and other skills mentioned above.
Within the first 11 months of operation, the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Office reported that only 13% of the young adults in this new unit had been issued at least one disciplinary report, compared to 33% of young adults in the general population of the jail. These types of practices and policies that produce a more normalized environment can better prepare people to rejoin their communities safely and successfully.
Conclusion
To be sure, the problems plaguing Rikers Island and jails across New York City are complex. They will not be fixed overnight. Fully addressing these problems also requires reducing the jail population through ensuring that cases move at a reasonable speed through the system, pretrial release and other alternatives to jail programs with an eye to public safety. But changing prison and jail culture is a pivotal step, and it’s possible as demonstrated by the examples in the states that we studied.
By shifting to an approach that focuses on dynamic security and normalization principles, Deml and Richards can help improve conditions for those who live and work behind bars.
Meanwhile, the City is planning for Rikers Island to close, and for the staff and the incarcerated population to move to new borough-based jails across the city. Deml and Richards’ work now to build a safer culture at Rikers won’t be lost but will travel with the staff to their new facilities, reducing the chance that the atrocities at Rikers Island will be repeated.
