Jail Professionals, Reformers Have a Fittingly Tumultuous Debate on Rikers

A forum on Rikers Island’s future that pitted law-enforcement professionals against prison reformers Nov. 14 was contentious and sometimes overheated as they staked out familiar positions: one reformer insisted Rikers had abandoned rehabilitation in favor of retribution, while his adversaries said the jail system’s flaws would continue even if Rikers was shut down.

The temperature rose noticeably a half-hour into the event in a basement conference room at Nyack College in Battery Park when Correction Officers Benevolent Association President Elias Husamudeen arrived. He and Akeem Browder, the political activist and brother of the late Kalief Browder, whose ordeal as a teen inmate underscored the flaws of the entire city criminal-justice system, quickly squared off, talking over each other in disputes that sometimes continued while other panelists were speaking.