four months ago, 56-year-old jerome was arrested for trespassing, and booked into new york's rikers island jail. >> you going to be missed big bro. me and him, we had a special connection, special relationship. >> seven days later, he was found dead in his cell. >> they said he was baked to death. heat. his room temperature reached well over 100 degrees with no ventilation. >>there's no words to explain. it just looks like you came from a building that caught on fire. >> he was blacker than my hair. he was darker than my hair. >> jerome was a former marine, who suffered from bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse. >> a week went by and we didn't hear from him, then two weeks, then it was 3 weeks. then my mother started saying, something it ain't right. >> his family says he never should have been in jail. but a judge had set his bail at two thousand five hundred dollars. that's how much it would have cost him to walk free before his trial. since jerome couldn't afford to pay, he was sent back to rikers island, to wait for his trial. in this episode of fault lines, we look at how courts handle the a

. >> the rikers island jail complex is scandalous for its harsh treatment of inmates. it's time for a reason that you likely wouldn't expect. reading a petition to change the jail's name, saying that the prominent family has a long connection with labor. he specifically points to richard ryker who is a leading critic participant in a kidnapping club, he sold men and women and children into slavery. and this home is one of the oldest in new york city, sitting on 1 acre of the massive ryker estate. one individual cause the petition ridiculous. >> he also notes the tremendous wealth, which he says they actually used to benefit and build into the situation today. >> this includes making kickbacks, that is illegal. >> we went to the mayor's office to see if this was feasible. there should be a process to review this. i also spoke with leslie. >> if you don't know, you're doomed to repeat it. >> how many people were actually on board with the petition? >> to 17 signatures. at least two weeks. until somebody pops off the money >> you know, i'm going to say not only because of

four months ago, 56-year-old jerome was arrested for trespassing, and booked into new york's rikers island jail. >> you going to be missed big bro. me and him, we had a special

four months ago, 56-year-old jerome was arrested for trespassing, and booked into new york's rikers island jailoing to be missed big bro. me and him, we had a special connection, special relationship. >> seven days later, he was found dead in his cell. >> they said he was baked to death. heat. his room temperature reached well over 100 degrees with no ventilation. >>there's no words to explain. it just looks like you came from a building that caught on fire. >> he was blacker than my hair. he was darker than my hair. >> jerome was a former marine, who suffered from bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse. >> a week went by and we didn't hear from him, then two weeks, then it was 3 weeks. then my mother started saying, something it ain't right. >> his family says he never should have been in jail. but a ju

at rikers island jail, a bakery churns out nearly 90,000 loaves of bread per week while teaching inmates how to bake. in many of the prisons profiled on "lockup," inmates have opportunities to learn skills that can help them find work on the outside. but all too many spend their time honing skills more suitable to mayhem and murder. >> i stabbed an inmate 12 times over some dope in front of the chow hall. >> i took a knife and stabbed him with it three or four times until he was dead. and then i butchered him with it. >> you find a piece of metal or something, file it down on the concrete. it ain't got to be sharp, it's just got to have a point. put your handle on it and do what you need to do. >> "lockup" crews are regularly exposed to the tools of a deadly trade. >> every prison we film in, there's always a shank museum, a place where the authorities display all of the weapons that are confiscated by staff. homemade weapons the inmates have made from bed springs or melted down plastic. they're truly ingenious but deadly as well. >> at california's san quentin state prison, we saw how s

"the new york times" reports led to resignations and dismissals at rikers island, the new york city jaillex, and to a justice department lawsuit seeking federal oversight of city jails. welcome to democracy now! it is great to have you with us, michael. talk about the beat up squad's and just exactly who this prisoner was. was auel harrell 30-year-old man, had been in and out of prison since 2002 on drug charges, selling and possession. yet no violence in his records. get something of a disciplinary history, but no violence. he had been diagnosed as bipolar in 2010. his family members would say he would sometimes behave erratically, thinking the television was speaking to him, photographs or speaking to him. 21, he was, by the accounts we have heard, also behaving erratically. he a been depressed for some time, announced to correction officers at fishkill correctional facility he was going home, had packed his bags, and headed for the exit. at some point, got into a correctionon with officers that led to him being handcuffed. and according to about 20 inmate accounts that we have, was be

rikers island. no one trains you to teach at a jail. the second thing we talked about is the leadership. we are never going to improve teacher quality until we focus on principal quality. the report hammers that. last year i spent a year at a school here locally with 25 teachers. it was not until we got to the granular work of looking at pedagogy, and classroom management, the tedious kinds of work, that we began to see improvement in that school. it goes back to the leadership. finally, we have forgotten about that in our sort of obsession with teacher quality. the last thing -- quality matters a lot. where do you get the information from? at a school today, and can are with a wonderful teacher -- a kindergarten with a wonderful teacher. i had no idea who she was. and so we met her last week. we felt much better. you get the information from without violating, frankly, someone's rights around privacy? that kind of info we have to get in the hands of parents. >> you think a lot about these issues at the sort of policy level. and you spoke to it a little bit about how folks are feeling bu

jail, 25 percent are in the united states. no country in the world has a higher proportion are absolute number of children ben to rikers island and the high-school there there are kids in prison trying to steady high school they outgrow their shoes sties - - size to get a good citizen at the end? someone who is trained to be valuk ale anything positive? know the only guarantee a 75 percent of those men will be back in jail within 180 days. we have a fundamental problem with a reduced in this country and we cannot ignore anybotÃwho was ruwe cing for president who doesn't have a part of their strategy what to do this will cost as $100 billion per year into the into an anchor of middle-class development. one of the things that haropens all the time is just to fix education. end of conversation i will take the other side. how good does that teacher have to b po imagine in dallas. it has 1.2 million people and growing. when the school bell rang today in the students walked out the door the number of people in the city of dallas that many walked out with no home to go to. to the tent or to the shelter or to the car wherever they ha