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Professors Betsy Ginsberg and Alex Reinert wrote in a Daily News op-ed that the attention generated by Paul Manafort’s potential transfer to Rikers threatens to obscure the conditions experienced every day by far less privileged people held there. “Every day, people held on Rikers Island, mostly poor, black and brown, will confront brutality, neglect and material deprivations that betray the Constitution’s admonition that punishment cannot precede conviction. We can tell ourselves that people confined in Rikers are being treated as innocent until proven guilty, but we will just be pretending. Even when high level federal, state and city officials are focused on reform, a culture of systemic brutality persists.”