Schools, Not Jails

Lessons from a Day in New York City

Yesterday evening, I had the tremendous honor and pleasure of delivering a talk to New York City school teachers who participate in a remarkable program called MA, a moniker originally envisioned as an acronym for Math for America. Here is how M fA describes itself:

Initially, MƒA was established to bring new mathematics teachers into the profession, who were supported by experienced teachers in the MƒA Master Teacher Fellowship. In 2014, the MƒA board decided to build on the success of the MƒA Master Teacher Fellowship, opening it to teachers of all STEM subjects in grades K-12 and growing the program to support 1,000 teachers annually, or roughly 10% of the STEM teaching force in NYC.

If you want an invigorating reminder that P-12 school teachers are the superheroes of our time, go spend an evening hanging out with them. I can’t remember the last time I was surrounded by a crowd of such dedicated, caring, self-sacrificing, visionary, and frightfully intelligent people who do so much for our society and get nowhere close to enough support and compensation in return. (And I am inspired and grateful that the M f A program is picking up some of the slack in those regards.)

My talk for M fA aimed to highlight how mathematics and data science can be used to promote social justice. To make my argument, I shared three stories of data-fueled activism, namely: a story about policing in my small town of Williamstown, Massachusetts; a story about race-based sentencing inequities in federal courts; and a story about incarceration at New York City’s infamous Rikers Island Jail. Coincidentally, earlier in the day, this horrific news story broke, and I incorporated it into my talk:

I just used the word “coincidentally,” but I should admit that it is actually not that coincidental, because incarcerated individuals frequently die at Rikers.

After the talk, I had the opportunity to mingle with teachers for an extended amount of time and I learned more about the critical work they do, but also, even though they are not really ones to complain, the challenges they face. Insufficient supplies. Overheated classrooms. Crumbling infrastructure. Inability to access restroom facilities that are humane, especially for adults. The list goes on. Of course, none of this stops them from excelling at their jobs, but teachers and students deserve more resources and better conditions.

As the evening progressed, the two threads I’ve alluded to above — over-incarceration and under-resourcing of schools — kept intertwining in my mind. Over-incarceration and under-resourcing of schools. Over-incarceration and under-resourcing of schools.

Over-Incarceration

The United States incarcerates more people than any other nation: an estimated 1.8 million individuals. The next country on the list is China, at 1.7 million individuals, even though China’s population is over four times that of the United States. This comparison reminds us that perhaps we should not consider total incarceration counts, but rather, per capita rates. How many people are incarcerated per 100,000 residents, we could ask? I believe that the United States used to be #1 on that list, but we are currently #5 (where I have removed American Samoa, which appears separately on the list, but is an American territory). Progress! We just trail those other countries whom we so often hold up as our peers on the world stage: El Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan (that’s sarcasm, people). The first continental European country to appear on the list is Poland, in position #65. The first major Commonwealth Realm country to appear is New Zealand, in position #103. Our geographic neighbor Mexico is at #92 and our other neighbor Canada is at #163.

Who is at Rikers Island

America’s most infamous incarceration facility is, arguably, New York City’s Rikers Island jail. Here is my own visualization of who is at Rikers (based on statistics from 2021), and why they are there:

Let me walk you through this, starting with the left-most pie. If an individual is arraigned on criminal charges in New York City, 70% of the time, they are released on their own recognizance until trial. In other words, the judge says, “you’ve been charged with a crime, and now go home and come back on your court date.” Another 28% of the time, though, the judge sets bail. If the defendant is able to pay bail, they can go home to await trial. If they can’t, they’ll need to stay in jail until trial. What the second pie shows us is that among those defendants for whom the judge sets bail, 89% of them cannot pay it. These defendants go to jail. Finally, the third pie takes a look at occupants of the jail and explains why they are there. Of the incarcerated individuals, 25% are there because they are, perhaps, serving a short sentence for a crime of which they were found guilty, or perhaps they are waiting for transfer to another incarceration facility. The vast majority, though — the remaining 75% of individuals in the jail — are there awaiting trial. Let’s say this again: 89% of defendants who are given bail can’t afford it, and they constitute 75% of the residents of Rikers Island. So who is at Rikers? Essentially, poor people who would not be there if they had more money. And let’s remember, people in the United States are innocent until proven guilty.

What Happens at Rikers Island

People are abused, get sick, and die. It’s impossible for me to cover all of the tragedies that happen at Rikers. The full catalog of horrors can be found in the archives of the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and other publications. All you need to do is look. There is medical neglect, heat stroke, suicide, poor food and water, abuse, racism, transphobia. Here is a recounting of some of the 27 people who died at Rikers between early 2022 and summer of 2023.

Let me now pull together everything I have said about Rikers:

• Rikers is composed primarily of poor people awaiting trial.
• In the United States, people are innocent until proven guilty.
• Individuals incarcerated at Rikers experience terrible things, including death.

Basically, Rikers abuses and kills innocent poor people.

In Conclusion

I am not by any stretch the first person to complain that in New York City — like in so many places — there are too many resources put into incarceration and not enough into education. Nor will I be the last. But the point cannot be repeated often enough.

The New York City government itself has estimated that it costs $556,539 to detain one individual at Rikers Island for one year. At the same time, New York City is slated to spend around $38,000 per year to educate each student. An internet search yields story after story complaining that $38,000 is among the highest in the nation, questioning why the cost of educating students is getting higher, and claiming that student outcomes are not better. I’m prompted to wonder why there are so many such stories, and yet so few stories challenging the notion of spending one half million dollars per year to kill poor people awaiting trial.

I choose not to spend my energy on in-the-weeds debates about how government budgets are allocated and what lines are fungible. I can do without factually inaccurate discussions about the alleged importance of incarceration for public safety. I’m not interested in arguments about standardized testing. I fully acknowledge that fixing our broken systems is not easy. But even though the solutions might be complex, my message remains simple: more books and humane bathrooms and air conditioning for NYC schools. No more innocent poor people abused and killed.

Your neighbor,

Chad