BY JOSH SAUL
PRISON
WHEN THE MAYOR of New York City chose a new correction commissioner in 2014, the city’s largest jail—Rikers Island—was notoriously inhumane and violent. Mayor Bill de Blasio selected as his new jails chief Joseph Ponte, a man with a progressive record of transforming jails in Maine and Tennessee. The New York Times Welcomed Ponte with the front-page headline, “De Blasio Setting Up a Test: Prison Reformer vs. Rikers Island.”