Before you hit the bridge, it says
welcome to Rikers Island and then you go
on a bridge and it's just like it was
the daytime, but it felt dark
when he starts to drive across the
bridge I've realized how long it was and
I could see Riker's Island, as we came over
the hill. I was going across the bridge
and I just I'm just looking at it I'm
just like the whole time shaking my head
in disbelief. On that bus is so much
stuff going through my mind but the main
thing is just that hoping that I that I
do make it out. It looked grim like it
looked like a monster like we were
about to go into you know a belly of a beast.
Sometimes your figure I may be better
off if I'm not living then feeling like
you're dehumanizing because you have to
put your milk carton inside of the
toilet to keep it cold and it's the
same place you take a dump I'm thinking
about doing something negative you
understand what I'm saying. I felt like
I'm here and nobody cares.
If you're arrested in New York City and can't make bail, you're likely to find yourself
confined to the Rikers Island jail
complex while you wait for trial, but
don't let the word Island lull you into
thinking of this as some Pleasant
windswept retreat. Rikers Island, a 413
acre landfill on the East River half the
size of Central Park, is home to the
largest correctional facility in the
United States. Some have called it the
worst if it was once possible to close
our eyes to what goes on behind the
locked doors of Rikers and the damage it
has done to thousands of lives it isn't
now. A recent documentary produced by
award-winning journalist Bill Moyers
brings Rikers vividly to life through
interviews with some of the men and
women who survived, but one of them calls
and upside down Kingdom. We're honored to have Bill Moyers with us today he joins
us in the Lloyd Sealy Library at John
Jay College which perhaps appropriately
houses the nation's largest archive of
criminal justice research. Bill welcome
to criminal justice matters. Steve its my
pleasure to be here. Let's start with the
right courage documentary it's an
amazing piece of work. It's hard to
listen to, hard to watch. Are you worried that you're preaching a
bit to the converted I mean the people
that you're gonna be talking to or
saying yes we have to change if you get
out of Riker's. Who else can you get if I
knew how to reach the unconverted I
would just focus exclusively on that, but
I want to begin with the choir because
for nobody else comes to church on
Sunday the choir shows up and you have
to have a good strong choir to keep the
message moving across the country, but
I've taken we've taken this film.
It's been shown in many cities around the
country. I've gone to eight or nine other
cities including the the old Wild West
of Phoenix Arizona and in Phoenix we had
a large turnout for the for the film and
we had former prosecutors, corrections
officers, activists, ACLU and others in
the audience. The discussion was one of
the best discussions I have had with the
film about Riker so what struck me
there and in California and of all
places in Louisiana which has more
people incarcerated per capita than any
state in the Union.
We had a large and vigorous turnout of
people some conservative some liberals
so slowly the message of of reforming
criminal justice is getting out across
the country in red states and blue states.
Oddly enough in the West you're getting
a lot more traction about let's change
the system and you actually are in there
in the mid-atlantic states in the East.
The reason for that is because we don't
get much pressed back here about it, but
many of those western states have
serious problems with overcrowding with
recidivism, with other problems that that
make better new bigger news in small
states that they do in in the state of
New York for example. California's county
jails are some of the most violent and
most crowded in the country so they're
very concerned about criminal justice
reform. The reform of the system and not
just of one prison or one aspect of the
system you talked in when you talked
about the film you talked about the
culture of cruelty and that comes out in
the film to quite an extent the way the
people talk about their experiences.
Explain a little bit about what you mean
by the culture of cruelty. Well I've lived in New York
for almost 50 years and I've passed
Rikers Island well every time you land
it LaGuardia you can look out off the
wing and see Rikers right below the
main landing strip in LaGuardia. I knew
it was there I Drive down FDR and I know
it's right out there here and I read
stories in the paper so it was there but
it hadn't penetrated my consciousness
yet until there was three four or five
years ago beginning I guess about five
years ago a series of brilliant
investigative reports from the New York
Times, The New Yorker the New York
Magazine, WNYC
and others talking about reporting on
the culture of cruelty but their
reporters could not get out there and by
culture of cruelty it's violence
among inmates and violence among inmates
and corrections officers. It's
unbelievably harsh treatment of solitary
confinement for people who don't
deserve it on any circumstance.
It was continuation of brutality that
had existed across various
administrations many cries for reform
nothing happened
I've read all of those stories and it hit
me that though the stories that the
inmates the former detain the detainees
were telling were still had to be
filtered through the experience of
journalists because they don't let you
in to see them in person out there so I
realize I'm in television 50 years
there's nothing more powerful than the
marriage of the word and the image and
how do we tell these stories where we
can't get out there. So we've put
together and I wanted to show I wanted
the witnesses the detainees to speak in
their own behalf to tell their own
stories to witness to what was happening
so no one would think this was being
manufactured contrived or manipulated
by a journalist and my team
round up about a hundred former
detainees interviewed them all at depth
we chose 12 or 13 interviewed them for
hours. Put it all together I don't appear in the film as you know.
It's these everyday ordinary people who
are telling their stories and what
happened to them that create your own
understanding that there is a culture
of cruelty and when people see the film
they don't have to ask again what is
that culture of cruelty. What do you
think they were willing to talk.
What got them speaking these are really
serious personal very painful stories.
I think most people want to share their
stories most you know most people have a
story and when you've been through that
experience your story is very dramatic
and very painful and very difficult and
if you find somebody who will listen
well listen with an open mind and listen
with even an open heart that you even
want to tell it more.They were very very
convincing in their stories and we you
know as we do with anybody but if I'm
going interview a banker I check out his story.
I wanna see if he's telling me the truth.
We check vetted their story with their
lawyers, their criminal lawyers, prosecutors,
the Legal Defense Fund anybody who'd
worked on those cases police records.
They're telling us the truth and they're
telling the truth in a way that only you
can do if you have been inside Rikers.
It's like talking to riders about war
and veterans of war. If  you opened a
veteran of war and let him tell his
story I've done many films with veterans
of war they have something they've not
been able to share and when you give
them permission to share it in all of
the pain with which they talk they will
they will tell you the truth.
These are amazingly painful stories to hear. They are I mean a woman being raped
three times in the shower at Rikers. A
young man well you know Kalief Browder
the most famous case he's sent at the
age I think of 17 or 14 to Rikers.
He's later found to be innocent of his crime
but he's thrown in the to solitary when
he tells that story. He goes back into
solitary he's desperate he finally gets
out after three years and a year later
commits suicide.
I mean it's just it's stories like that
that make it very hard for us to
understand how it can happen.The Mayor said he wants to close it and possibly move it.
Then turn Rikers into smaller jails
closer to home and Rikers now is called
the worst correction institution
in the United States but saying that
presupposes that there's a role that
these large correctional institutions
still play and that's right up for
debate as you well know. What are we
doing wrong do you think in the way we
treat people who broken the law or
run away from the law.
How could we change it? Well there I'm
not an expert to Steve on criminal
justice reform. I'm a journalist I cover
many subjects about which I am a student
for which I study but about which I'm
not an expert but just as a citizen as
well as having done many stories on
incarceration and crime over the years
as a citizen we send too many non
violent criminals to jail. We give them
sentences that are too long. We fail to
concentrate on bail reform which would
get them out me 95% of all the criminal
cases I believe in New York are a plea
bargain which is a sort of an indication
of the breakdown of our system we need
to reform bail we need
long tough sentences for murderers we
should concentrate on murder and
homicide and solve those problems and
get the dangerous people off the streets
until they repent or recover but we
don't need to be sending all these
people we send from in and out of prison
for nonviolent crimes. I mean there
are a lot of really good reforms. What do
I think about moving Rikers?
I think it's too big it's too unwieldy.
Corruption tends to set in the larger
the organization becomes because there are  fewer vigilant points that you can hold
people accountable for. We need smaller
jails.  I'm convinced that we need them as
the mayor and as well as the Commission
Judge  Lippmann's Commission on the
Judge John Lippmann former Chief
Justice of the Appeals Court in New York right.
Yes so his commission worked hard.
By the way they screened this film every
one of them screen this film they worked
very hard to be fair in their
recommendations and they are
convinced that that the jails need to be
nearer to the courthouses. I mean the
press has done them a disservice by
talking about putting these jails in
residential areas and communities.
What the Commission
means by that and the Reformers mean by
that is putting these jails closer to
where the trials can be faster you have
to go back and forth across the only
bridge that joins Rikers to the mainland.
That parents loved ones friends don't
have to make that arduous trip by bus
out to Rikers put them near the courts
where  the process can be streamlined.
You know I was present
at the creation of the National
Commission on criminal of Criminal
Justice Administration in America back
in 1965 in the White House when 
Johnson the first president ever to go
before Congress and announce a
commission on criminal justice
it's unbelievable. He appointed twenty
nineteen senior people to be on this
commission they took 18 months they
tackled every issue from juvenile
delinquency to the mob and they came up
by saying many of the things that became
the bedrock of our criminal justice
system over the last 50 years now all of
those are being reversed by the Trump
administration and the Sessions
Department of Justice but every person
who's looked at this issue says that
those provisions in the report that of
the Johnson Crime Commission are the
bedrock of what we need to do. Shorter
sentences tougher sentences for known
hardened criminals bail reform all the
things we're addressing now and that the
Lippman Commission built into their
recommendations those are fair
recommendations they are workable
recommendations they will help make our
prison system in this city less venal
and our justice system more efficient.
The irony is the climate is very similar
50 years ago I mean for most people it
seems like the medieval age but the
cities are flame and protest we have a
controversial president and we have an
era where there's not really a lot of
willingness to compromise and what's
interesting about your career before you
got into journalism is that you were
very involved in policy making it the
highest levels. Tell us a bit about
what makes policy.
Is there any lessons we can learn from 50
years ago about the compromises that are
necessary. You know the hard work and the
only stuff that's nicer they went to
policy. Lyndon Johnson taught me three lessons one in the
campaign of 1960 never passed up a
bathroom because you don't know when
you'll get one again second always eat
breakfast because you made it may be
your last meal of the day
and third bill he said a man's
information is a man's judgment is no better than his
information. Data is the first is the
backbone of reform. You've got to know
what's happening. Do you know when we put the President's Commission together in
1965 March of 1965 we had no national
data on crime there was no way to gather
the statistics about what was happening
in our states and cities and the first
thing the Commission did was the first
thing Johnson told President Johnson
told the Commission was I want the data. I want to know how many crimes are being
committed and at every city and every
state in this country. Which crimes are
receiving the longest sentences. We've got to know
enough to base good judgment on it. The
second thing he said be said was to listen.
Listen to every part of the criminal justice,
listen to the police, listen to the
prosecutors, listen to the defense
lawyers. I want you to listen to
everybody who's anybody in the criminal
justice system and the greatest thing to
come out of that Commission made 200
recommendations. By the way one of them
was 9-1-1. Commission decided that we
needed a national emergency number and
9-1-1 is directly traceable to the
Johnson Commission in
a study it's finding in 1967, 50 years
ago this year but what really came
out of it and everyone who's anyone in
criminal justice today who studied this
knows that that that what came out of
the Johnson Commission was a look at the
system as a whole. What was the
relationship of the police to the
prosecutors.The relationship of the
prosecutors to the judges in the
sentences they didn't know how local
police connected to the FBI.
The FBI connected to state troopers in Texas. We did not consider
criminal justice as a system even
Johnson when he
went into politics believed that federal
job government had nothing to do with
with criminal justice that was the
problem for local police and state
police he changed his mind in part from
politics. I mean Barry Goldwater ran
against him in 1964 claiming Johnson was
soft on crime right.The second thing is
social unrest. That's a
familiar odds. Part of the
problem Steve with our criminal justice
system is this almost exclusively
determined today by hard-nosed
politicians who will call for tougher
measures on crime. I mean there's no
other nation in the world that permits
this criminal justice system to be to be
organized around political ambition.
I mean we have the judges are elected in
many states our prosecutors are elected
in many states so you get political appeals
not the appeal of data and reason
brought to bear on how to deal with this
most severe of issues. So this raises the question
of what does it take for us to actually
make change? We'll be honoring you very
soon as there are justice Trailblazer at
John Jay for your work in the media and
you feel working in justice in general.
Our first honoree was David Simon of the
Wire and in one of your
interviews with him you said something
you gotta have to say something very
very interesting and I think um I mean
if I paraphrase it correctly he said
that the only time we get changed in
America is when we're threatened to the
core. Do you agree with that? Just about.
Sometimes change comes as a result of
evolution but most of it it comes at a
time of distress and political movement movements create
political issues create movements like
global warming
today but we are stressed today on
criminal justice for one basement for
several reasons. One it's expensive we're
not getting our money's worth from
recidivism that we should for all the
money we spend and that's what
California's budget or Arizona's budget this
year's going over a billion dollars of
which criminal justice is the single
biggest driver so people who don't want
to don't have it or don't want to spend
it don't have money are saying it's
about time for economic and fiscal
reasons that we change our system.
There is a growing awareness of the inhumanity of our criminal justice system.
You can't watch our film on
Rikers without realizing that none of
those guys or women killed anybody they
don't they shouldn't be an eye for an
eye on the tooth for a tooth what they
did is potentially reformable some are
but many aren't.When people's conscience is aroused and that's what journalism
should be doing and that's why I did
this film is because brilliant
journalists did extraordinary pieces of
reporting about Rikers but until you can
see the person who is suffering from the
offense you can't understand it from an
emotional and conscientious level so
raising awareness of the cost of
criminal justice raising awareness of
the failure of criminal justice and
raising the issue of the
fairness of criminal justice will bring
about the kind of change we need.Once we
can refute and rebut the argument that
Trump and sessions are making is the
only way to deal with it is don't lock
them up and throw away the key which is
you know sounds it's from Medieval Europe
You know it's no disrespect to
the great journalists have done this
fantastic work and bringing these
criminal justice.Oh no I'm indebted
to them but they weren't print but so many journalists are not
taking seriously so journalism as a craft
is not taken seriously now and is
there something that we're doing wrong
as journalists in our failure are we
failing to communicate in some way? You
know why I'm in the media you're in the media.
The word media covers too many too
wide
a spectrum there so this world-class
journalism be done today including on the web.
There's some world-class
journalism being done. We have
probably the greatest and last great
newspaper war going on right now between
the Washington Post and New York Times
over who could tell more about what
Trump is doing wrong but an
individual or some individuals but journalism
as an institution is in trouble
because there's no longer a way to pay
for the reporting that needs to be done.
It's expensive to keep a reporter or
team of reporters at Rikers covering
Rikers interviewing people I mean
it cost us six hundred thousand plus
dollars to do this one documentary.
There's no advertising that'll support
that in the long run and the commercial
networks have abrogated their
responsibility to use their power and
their money to do serious investigative
and explanatory journalism as a group
I'm worried about the journalism that's
still being done though because Trump is
a master and you know look at that okay
look it's a shiny object over and
everybody looks it over here he reverses
good policies so we're all too
drawn to the shiny object of Washington
Institute for the policies of worse
you started this conversation by talking
about policy rarely does good
information bring about bad policy. Good
information often brings about good
policy but it has to be reported, it has
to be explained, it has to be interpreted,
and it has to be done so not in just a
few national papers but down where
everyday men and women get up every day
and go to work and raise the children
and make a community and they
have to be aware of what's going on and
today American journalism is not giving
people the information they need.
We're sitting in an institution in a library
institution that's devoted to educating
young people in criminal justice as well
as other things probably the most
important criminal justice educational
institution in the country do you think
there is a role for such institutions in
both conveying the story of criminal
justice and changing it. What would that
role be if there is one.Well education
is the beginning of all knowledge and
the beginning of all change I think
right I would love in in five years to
be able to speak I at the age of 87 then
I love to come at age 87 and speak to
the first graduating class of the John
Jay Institute for journalism, training
journalist wonderful training journalist
in criminal justice issues. I mean we are
amateur as we you know journalists are
licensed to explain things we don't
understand and makes you a
good student I was a good student in
elementary school middle school high
school in college.
I love to study and that's what a good
journalist does he studies for a test
takes it like Rikers and it moves on to
the next one it's to start all over again.
So the more perspective
journalists or school in a place like
this and the midst of one of the
countries if not the country's greatest
library for justice the better off we'll
be no not a hundred and five years from
now 200 journalists graduating from here
with their degrees in John Jay's Institute
of Justice BAs or whatever you call it.
I'm gonna hold you to that.
Well if I were George Soros you wouldn't
have to hold me to it.You would be holding my check.
You sound a bit more hopeful than I expected you be. I'm a journalist. I don't look at the
world through rosy glasses you can't you
can't look at the realities around us
and feel good about the way we're
conducting our society of the direction
democracy is going I said
to a friend of mine on Wall Street what
do you think about the market and he
said I'm not sure my optimism is
justified and he said I'm an optimist
but I'm not sure my optimist is
justified I practice a philosophy that
grew up around a great Italian political
scientist named Gramski and he said he
practiced the pessimism of the mind and
the optimism of the will pessimism of
the mind you look at the world the way
it is you don't deny the evil the
suffering the
the hunger the starvation the corruption
the malice the wars you don't deny that
but you don't look at it through rosy
glasses you look at them for what they
are but he practices the optimism of the
world which means that every morning he
gets out of bed
Gramski said every morning he gets out
of bed thinking he has to make some
contribution to solving one part of the
problem and that's what we read journals
do we see the world for what it is and
it ain't pretty but we get up every
morning to see if there's a story we can
tell, if there's an editorial we can
write, if there's a column we can produce,
if there was an interview. We can do that
sheds some light and some hope on the
human condition I think you're an
inspiration for all of us.Thank you.
Bill thank you very much. My pleasure.The
future of Riker's is still unclear
skeptics wonder whether the mayor's
promise to close it down can ever be
fulfilled. Building smaller facilities
will cost money that may be hard to find.
It also requires fundamental reforms in
our approach to crime and punishment.
Public service journalism the kind
exemplified by Bill Moyers has never
been more important in keeping stories
like Rikers in the forefront of public
debate that's one reason he's been
selected by John Jay and the crime
report as of justice Trailblazer this
year.
Bill Moyers would be the first to say he
doesn't need yet another honor
he's already racked up 36 Emmys and nine
Peabody Awards during his nearly a
half-century career in journalism but
that long career is a symbol and an
inspiration for thousands of other
journalists and small communities and
large cities around the country who are
determined to tell the truth about our
criminal justice system I hope he can
join us at a reward dinner on February
15th to hear Bill and her other honorees
in person.Information on the dinner is
available on the following screen. I'm
Steve Handelsman thanks for watching.
See you next time
