Inside Rikers Island: the ‘dysfunctional’ US jail where inmates have ‘free rein’

Inmates have taken over Rikers Island as the New York jail spirals into violent “lawlessness”, a series of investigations have found.

The prison facility “has been notorious for violence and neglect for decades”, said The Marshall Project, a nonprofit organisation that tracks the US criminal justice system. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, it has “plunged into a new state of emergency”, with scores of stabbings and a dozen deaths this year alone, according to a recent status report by federal monitors.

Security breakdown

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The global health crisis “and a subsequent staffing emergency have taken a brutal toll on incarcerated people and jailers alike”, said The New York Times (NYT). But the “sheer lawlessness inside the compound is difficult to fathom”.

A probe by the paper found that detainees “have seized near total control over entire units, deciding who can enter and leave them”. Prisoners have “wandered in and out of staff break rooms” and “answered phones that were supposed to be manned by guards”.

Several inmates have reportedly “stolen keys and used them to free others in custody, who went on to commit slashings and other acts of violence”.

In one incident, a prisoner “decided to hijack a bus inside the Rikers Island jail complex” after finding the keys “unsecured” in the ignition. He then “rammed a jail building” repeatedly “with enough force to shake the walls and scatter bricks”.

“The most striking aspect of the current dysfunction at Rikers Island is the extent to which incarcerated people seem to run parts of the complex,” the NYT continued. On at least “five occasions in the past 18 months”, inmates who “should have been confined or closely supervised” were instead given “free rein” to commit violence.

The situation inside the jail has been exacerbated in recent months by both a pandemic-related “slowdown in court proceedings” and the staffing crisis, The Telegraph said. The facility has “spiralled into turmoil” in part because of what the NYT described as a “generous” sick leave policy that has reportedly been abused by some prison staff.

According to The Telegraph, “at one point during the summer, more than one-third of the guards - about 3,000 of 8,500 - were on sick leave or medically unfit to work with inmates”.

Even before Covid struck, the “generously funded” facility was known for its “appalling” conditions, said The Economist. The cost of jailing each inmate totals $438,000 (£322,000) a year, yet Rikers Island has long been a byword for “misery”.

During a recent visit, a member of the New York State Assembly “saw an inmate attempt suicide”, the paper continued. The politician also reported seeing “uncollected rubbish and vermin” and was told by inmates that they were “not being fed” and “not receiving medical care”.

Tracking has found that as of late September, the death toll at the jail this year had reached 12, including at least five suicides. And a total of 39 stabbings and slashings were recorded in August alone, up from seven in the same period last year.

Who is to blame for the chaos “depends on whom you talk to”, said The Marshall Project. Corrections officers claimed that “staffing shortages and new rules limiting long-term solitary confinement have made their jobs more dangerous”.

However, the NYT found evidence that “correction officers have participated in beatings or failed to intervene in hangings and other urgent situations”. Last week, “a guard was charged with providing a razor blade to a detainee who planned to use it as a weapon”.

A guard who has worked on the island for more than a decade told The Marshall Project that inmates are also “beating the hell out” of officers. The unnamed officer said: “The majority of our officers who are out right now have work-related injuries, not Covid. But the [Department of Correction] doesn’t report it.”

The insider added: “When you do have an officer that defends himself, we’re in the media, like, ‘Oh my God, you beat up an inmate!’ The inmates know our power has been removed. These guys can jump up in your face and yell, ‘I’ll fuck you up!’ You can’t touch them.”

Zachary Katznelson, head of the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform, told the NYT that while “Rikers has long been dysfunctional, decrepit and dangerous”, the current situation “is next level”.

“It is an inability to deliver even the basic services,” he said, “something we haven’t seen in a long time, if not ever.”

‘Painful as hell’

Violence on Rikers Island is “not exactly news”, said The Economist. But as the bloodshed reaches unprecedented levels, “lawmakers want the prison to be shut down permanently”, according to The Telegraph.

Rikers “currently houses about 4,800 inmates”, said the paper, “many of whom are suffering from mental illness”.

“It is painful as hell to go through this,” said Vincent Schiraldi, who took over as commissioner of the Department of Correction in New York City in June. “It’s painful for the incarcerated people and for the staff. It’s painful for me personally.”

Schiraldi told The Marshall Project that he had launched a project to “physically transform the space” in order to make the jail “much more humane, much more decent”.

But “there is no programming if there’s not enough staff”, he warned. “You can’t get your visit. We won’t have religious services today. We won’t have haircuts. Commissary doesn’t come in time.

“All that stuff piles on top of itself and results in a very frustrating, tense and sometimes violent environment.”