THE ISLAND

THE ISLAND DEATH & DISHONOR ON RIKERS ISLAND

MURDER ON THE ISLAND

2021 began with Rikers Island in a miserable state, with every indication that conditions would soon get much worse. COVID was spiking. The staff was depleted, and the jail was getting more crowded. In January, its population rose above 5,000 — an increase of more than 25 percent from the spring of 2020. After nearly two years without a suicide at the facility, a man hanged himself before the month was out. A gruesome incident followed in early March, then another suicide, then an overdose. The people incarcerated at Rikers continued to die at such a steady rate that the agency charged with investigating deaths in custody couldn’t keep up.

CHAOS ON THE ISLAND

Rikers is a complex of jails, not a prison. A small number of people are serving short sentences for misdemeanors or parole violations, but the vast majority are waiting for trial. Many are there because they can’t make bail. 90% are Black or brown. Their alleged offenses range from graffiti and shoplifting to rape and murder. They are innocent until proven guilty, though no one treats them that way. The city spends an annual $550K per incarcerated person, compared with $28K per student in its public schools, for conditions that a court-ordered monitor described as “rife with violence and disorder.”

THE WHISTLEBLOWER & THE ACCESS On March 17, an officer named Timothy Hodges testified to the Board of Correction, the body that oversees Rikers, that the jail was facing a personnel crisis and could not provide a basic standard of care. But the staff shortages, he predicted, would lead to chaos. In May, officials were forced to lock down the Anna M. Kross Center, which houses those with mental illness, because too many posts were unmanned. Later that month, the Department of Correction commissioner resigned hours before

a federal monitor assigned to oversee Rikers issued a scathing report. Men were sleeping on the floor and defecating in plastic bags. Violence was rife, inflicted by inmates and guards alike.

Emergency “probe teams,” with officers dressed in riot gear and wielding batons and pepper spray, regularly burst in to suppress disturbances. Banging their heads against walls, slashing their wrists, attempting suicide, detainees were harming themselves at the highest rate in five years.

AWOL ON THE ISLAND

Through the summer, crime and fear of crime were rising, prosecutors were pushing for lockups, and Rikers detainees kept dying. On any given day, nearly one-third of the staff were out sick, unable to work with detainees because of injury, or simply AWOL. In early September, the jail system’s chief medical officer sent a bracing letter to the City Council.

“While some might ascribe recent death, to long-standing dysfunction of Rikers Island, it represents a new and worsening emergency that has developed over the course of the last year,” Ross MacDonald wrote. Jail conditions had “meaningfully contributed” to the deaths, he said. In his opinion, the city could no longer keep its staff or the people in its custody safe.

POLITICS, THE MAYOR & RIKERS ISLAND

There were, toward the end of the year, a few signs of progress.

Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Less Is More Act, authorizing the release of 191 detainees with technical parole violations.

The Rikers staffing crisis began to ease. “I’m not popping a Champagne cork,” said the new commissioner, Vincent Schiraldi, on December 1. But things were “bending in the right direction as the population declines.” On January 1, Rikers and its problems will be inherited by the new mayor. Eric Adams has called the complex a “national embarrassment” and a “stain on our city.”

He has signed on to a plan to close Rikers by 2027 and replace it with smaller jails in each borough and said he will restore rehabilitative programming in the meantime. He has also promised to bring back solitary confinement, despite the opposition of 220 advocacy organizations, 74 state lawmakers, and all 12 of the city’s Democratic congressional representatives.

POLITICS, THE MAYOR & RIKERS ISLAND

Mayor Eric Adams and his jails commissioner, Louis A. Molina, for the incarcerated have said that the city is incapable of have vowed to enact a reform plan that was ordered and keeping detainees safe, and they have called for an outside approved earlier this year by a federal judge. But lawyers official to take control of the jails.

CORRECTIONS VS. REALITY

The powerful correction officers’ union has said that hiring more guards would solve the problems. But records and interviews show that there is no staffing shortage in the jail system. In fact, on days this year when guard posts in volatile Rikers housing units went unfilled, hundreds of other correction officers were stationed elsewhere in less dangerous positions, including as secretaries, laundry room supervisors and even bakers.

THE MONEY INSIDE PRISON The failures are especially stark given the vast sums the city has spent on the Correction Department. At an annual cost to taxpayers more than 6x’s the average in the nation’s biggest cities, New York has operated a jail complex that has broken down in fundamental

ways, leaving some detainees to roam unsupervised and others to go without food or basic health care.

The fallout has occurred largely out of sight, on an island in the East River that most New Yorkers never visit or even think about.

GLADIATOR SCHOOL

Under pressure to reduce violence by both guards & incarcerated, correction managers approached in a way that handed over power to gang members. For years, the jail system had rotated incarcerated people in and out of housing areas on a regular basis, seeking to prevent detainees from banding together and outmatching correction officers. But the policy also meant that rival gang members were often housed together, leading to stabbings, slashings and fights that guards would have to break up, often using force. The wardens began gradually concentrating members of the same gangs in certain housing areas, reasoning that the practice would make their numbers look better. Soon, some units became known as “Blood houses” and others as belonging to the Crips and other gangs, such as the predominantly Dominican Trinitarios. “They started putting the gangs together to quiet them, and in essence gave the gangs control,” “It had the side effect of creating powerhouse monopolies.”