Between The Lines - Josh Rovner: Report on Abuse of Adolescent Inmates in New York Draws Attention to Nationwide Crisis (Week Ending Oct. 24, 2014)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

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The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

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Report on Abuse of Adolescent Inmates in New York Draws Attention to Juvenile Justice System Crisis

Posted Oct. 15, 2014

Interview with Josh Rovner, state advocacy associate with the Sentencing Project, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

In August, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan, Preet Bharara, issued a report charging that the New York City Department of Correction had systematically violated the civil rights of young male prisoners, 16 to 18 years old, held at Rikers Island, by failing to protect them from the rampant use of unnecessary and excessive force by abusive correction officers.

The report described a “deep-seated culture of violence” against youthful inmates at the jail complex, perpetrated by guards who operated with little fear of punishment. It singled out for blame a “powerful code of silence” among the Rikers Island prison staff, along with a virtually useless system for investigating charges against guards made by inmates. The report found that the result was a “staggering” number of injuries among adolescent inmates.

U.S. attorney Bharara warned that if the city did not work cooperatively to develop new policies and procedures, the Justice Department could file a federal lawsuit asking a judge to order the imposition of remedies. On the date the report was issued, Aug. 4, Bharara gave the city 49 days to respond to the investigation’s findings. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Josh Rovner, state advocacy associate with The Sentencing Project, who talks about the investigation and the larger problem of criminally charging teenagers as adults and taking a hard line on minor offenses.

JOSH ROVNER: I would say that many of the problems at Rikers are larger than any one site. The federal investigation revealed things that shocked the conscience, but one would have to be blind to think that those abuses are unique to the three buildings that the (project) happened to investigate. They didn't even look at the girls' prisons. We can talk about what they did find. They found a deep-seated culture of violence. That's not the prisoners; that's the guards, and those guards had little fear of being punished.

BETWEEN THE LINES: New York is one of only two states that treat 16-year-olds as adults in the criminal justice system. What impact do you think that may have had on the level of violence directed against them?

JOSH ROVNER: New York state is one of just two states to treat everyone over 16 as an adult. North Carolina is the other. And I think it's important to get this exactly correct. New York state says if you're accused of a crime at 16, you're an adult. But you're still a teenager when you apply for a driver's license, if you want to get married or buy alcohol or cigarettes. When it comes to the justice system, they're willing to make an exception; 16-year-olds are occasionally adults in NYS. All the science disagrees with this view; adolescent brains are still developing. Even teenagers who do make mistakes though, do have a capacity for reform. Teenagers are not little adults.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Until a few years ago, Connecticut also considered 16- and 17-year-olds adults in the criminal justice system. Do you have any comparative data on New York and Connecticut since the change?

JOSH ROVNER: Connecticut did raise the age back in 2007. They passed a law, and that went into effect on New Year's Day, 2010. Connecticut joined the mainstream on that, and did their crime go up? No! Juvenile arrest rates in Connecticut fell from 22,000 in 2008 to 13,000 in 2011 – that's the last year for which there's data, and that's a 41 percent drop. Let's compare that to NYS: 2008, there were 102,000 arrests; 2011, 120,000 arrests of juveniles; that's an 18 percent increase. Being tough on crime doesn't work. These are federal counts, and they count juveniles as being 10 to 17 years old, 17 inclusive, so whether the state is treating juveniles as juveniles, they're still counted under the federal data.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So the U.S. attorney's office issued a report, and the New York Times also did an expose on the issue...

JOSH ROVNER: I think what is so awful about this study is that we discovered that the data that was available is completely inadequate. The teenagers were afraid to report what was happening. The New York Times in their additional study found that corrections officials had sanitized the data – that's a polite way of saying they lied, that the abuses and fights and beatings were even worse. The teenagers don't report the abuse for fear of retribution. So the data that we have is incomplete. The federal report issued 80 recommendations; I think the most important is removing teenagers entirely from Rikers; that system is broken for juveniles.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Josh Rovner, does the government report suggest where these teens should be held?

JOSH ROVNER: They ought to be in community-based programs closer to home. The New Yorker had this remarkable piece about Kalief Browder, 16 years old. He was being investigated for stealing a backpack; the police said he stole it; Kalief said he didn't. This is what we have courts for. And he sat at Rikers Island for three years because of the backlog of cases. The question of whether we need to be locking up low-level offenders in the first place is a key question.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What other of the 86 recommendations do you think are the most important?

JOSH ROVNER: You know, they also recommended taking teenagers out of solitary confinement, which is something that all the adolescent development experts would agree with as well. Mayor DiBlasio announced in fact they are going to end solitary confinement for teenagers there, as of Dec. 31. When the announcement was made, there were 51 teenagers in solitary confinement at Rikers. Kids can be put into solitary confinement for things like horseplay, talking back and having more clothing than they're entitled to. It was something that was being completely abused. One thing I find very interesting in all of this is that the mayor's office has said that this change to solitary confinement was not in response to this report. I'm really wondering when it is that the mayor is going to respond to this report. There was a deadline of late September; we are now about two weeks past that deadline. Has anyone been fired, disciplined, reassigned? The mayor's office hasn't said so, and even worse, the warden and deputy warden of the facility have been promoted. It's an outrage. When you have a broken system and you're looking at that many recommendations, there's a lot to be done. It really starts with moving kids out of the facility and not locking up low-level offenders in the first place.

Find more information on The Sentencing Project at sentencingproject.org.