Dispatch From Rikers Island: ‘It Looks Like a Slave Ship in There’
Curbed, October 5, 2021: Dispatch From Rikers Island: ‘It Looks Like a Slave Ship in There’
“New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex has long been a dysfunctional, violent place. But 2021 has been particularly bloody. So far, 12 detainees have died there, at least five of them by suicide. There were 39 stabbings and slashings in August, compared with seven last August, according to a late-September status report by court-appointed federal monitors.
The monitors, appointed in the settlement of Nuñez v. City of New York, a 2011 class-action suit filed by Rikers detainees, have described the situation as ‘nothing short of an emergency.’ That ‘emergency’ is marked by ‘violence among incarcerated people, violence at the hands of staff, and violence toward staff, in addition to a disturbing rise in self-harming behavior.’ The status report also cites ‘failures to properly secure doors on cells, vestibules and control stations.’”
Additional reading:
The Nation, October 6, 2021: Closing Rikers Island Is a Matter of Life and Death
New York Daily News, October 5, 2021: Legislators, public defenders call on DAs to stop pushing high bail given dangerous conditions at Rikers Island
New York Post, October 4, 2021: Legal Aid claims Rikers inmates are not getting proper medical care: lawsuit
The New York Times, September 15, 2021: 10 Deaths, Exhausted Guards, Rampant Violence: Why Rikers Is in Crisis
