On any given day, however, most women in custody have been there ten weeks or longer. A 2017 report by the Prisoner Reentry Institute found that 60 percent of women admitted to jail in the city were released within two weeks. The women’s jail population in New York City is a mix of short-stayers and long-stayers. In fact, the same report notes, most people detained pretrial in New York City today couldn’t be released on bail, even if they could afford it, because of existing warrants or holds from other cases. For instance, if the city stopped jailing everyone with bail set at $2,000 or less, it would cut admissions by more than half, but reduce the daily population by just 3 percent, according to a recent report by the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. Reducing jail populations requires tackling both of these numbers. In contrast, more than half of all people admitted to jail will be bailed out in less than a week, but those defendants account for just 2 percent of the population. In New York City, just 6 percent of people admitted to jail will stay longer than six months, but they account for nearly half of the jail population on any given day. But equally important is how long they stay.
The more people admitted to jail custody, the more people there are behind bars.
Two key numbers determine the size of a city’s jail population: admissions and average length of stay. “But let’s make Rosie’s the priority.” Barriers to decarceration “It has to be phased out,” said Close Rosie’s co-founder Kathy Morse. Their group is calling for the women’s jail on Rikers to be closed first. Members of Close Rosie’s, a group that includes formerly incarcerated women, say the factors that lead women to jail, not to mention the issues they face once they’re there, mean most of the women shouldn’t be incarcerated in the first place. Increasingly, activists are putting pressure on the city to pay more attention to women in the criminal justice system. And because most jailed women are mothers, their incarceration can have sweeping consequences for families. On average, women have fewer financial resources, which can result in an inability to pay bail. Of the roughly 500 women now in city jails, many have significant unmet needs such as homelessness and substance use disorder. “The relative obscurity of women in the overall system has resulted in far fewer, if any, reforms targeted towards this population, despite growing momentum for criminal justice reform,” the Vera Institute of Justice and the New York Women’s Foundation noted in a new report on women in Rikers. A 2017 plan released by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration for closing Rikers by 2027 calls for the city to decrease its jail population to fewer than 5,000 people over the next decade.īut advocates say women are often left out of that conversation. Just 13 percent of people arrested in New York today are taken into Department of Correction custody. Over the last three decades, New York City has decreased its jail population from a high of nearly 22,000 in 1991 to just above 8,000 today, giving it the lowest jail incarceration rate among all major U.S. A higher percentage of women than men in the city’s jail system grapple with these burdens, and that makes women harder to serve-and harder to decarcerate. Gudin, like many women, entered Rikers already suffering from past trauma and mental health issues. “I cannot be locked in,” she told The Appeal. Gudin said she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. She said she was never given a reason for the transfer, but it gravely affected her mental health. Singer Center or Rosie’s, she was temporarily moved to an enclosed individual cell. Initially held in a 50-person dorm in the women’s facility, known as the Rose M. A year later, she missed a court date and was remanded to Rikers Island. In 2013, Tatyana Gudin was arrested for drug possession with intent to sell, a charge she denies.