RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nyc-to-pay-3-3-million-to-family-of-teen-who-languished-at-rikers-island-11548371523?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=3

New York City will pay $3.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of the teenager who spent three years at the Rikers Island jail complex after being accused of stealing a backpack, becoming a symbol of dysfunction in the criminal-justice system.

In 2010, 16-year-old Kalief Browder, originally from the Bronx, was arrested and held at Rikers on $3,000 bail. He spent time in solitary confinement and returned to court dozens of times. In 2013, the charges were dismissed. After his release, Mr. Browder died by suicide in 2015 at the age of 22.

“Kalief Browder’s story helped inspire numerous reforms to the justice system to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again, including an end to punitive segregation for young people on Rikers Island,” a spokesman for the New York City Law Department said on Thursday. “We hope that this settlement and our continuing reforms help bring some measure of closure to the Browder family.”

The city didn’t acknowledge wrongdoing in the settlement.

“This was a fair and reasonable settlement,” said lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, who represents Mr. Browder’s estate.

The $3.3 million settlement includes attorney fees and expenses. A surrogate judge will determine how the money is distributed among Mr. Browder’s family members.

https://www.city-journal.org/bail-reform

Last September, as part of a national push for criminal-justice reform, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a charitable organization, announced a plan to pay the bail of every woman and minor held in New York City’s jails. According to the group, run by Kerry Kennedy, the slain senator’s daughter, “access to justice depends on whether you can afford bail. The majority of people incarcerated in the notoriously violent Rikers Island are behind bars for the crime of being too poor.”

This is a favorite theme of the reformers, but most Rikers inmates are accused of serious crimes. Around 11.4 percent of the population is there for murder, attempted murder, or manslaughter; 20 percent are in for robbery or burglary; and another 25 percent face charges involving weapons, felony assault, sale of drugs, or rape or other sexual offenses. New York’s jails are not crowded with people whose only crime was jumping a subway turnstile or smoking weed; the average number of people held in Rikers on a given day for fare-beating is two, and for pot possession, one. And “the majority” of Rikers inmates are behind bars because they’re serving out a sentence, are ineligible for bail because of outstanding warrants, or are awaiting trial for a serious crime—not because they can’t afford bail. Even the majority of women and juveniles at Rikers, the target of the Kennedy group’s efforts, are ineligible for bail.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-americans-confidence-in-nations-world-image-grows/

58 percent of respondents in a Gallup poll of American adults released Monday said they believe the U.S. is seen “very favorably” or “somewhat favorably” by the rest of the world — a three-point increase from last year’s survey, and the highest percentage recorded by the poll since 2003.

About 80 percent of Republicans and 36 percent of Democrats said the country is seen favorably by the rest of the world, and neither number represented much change from last year. But the number of independents who said the same jumped eight points.

Despite the broad confidence in America’s image, only a small percentage of respondents, 31 percent, said the current president is respected by foreign leaders.

Respondents’ confidence in how other countries see the U.S. appears to be separate from confidence in the Trump administration, whose controversial foreign-policy decisions have sometimes been criticized on both sides of the aisle. It also appears to be separate from their confidence in the nation’s position on the global stage, with which 53 percent of them expressed dissatisfaction.