Everything about Rikers Island totally explained
Rikers Island is the name of one of
New York City's largest
jail facilities, as well as the name of the 413.17-acre (1.672 km²) island on which it sits, in the
East River between
Queens and the mainland
Bronx, adjacent to the runways of
LaGuardia Airport. The island itself is part of the borough of the Bronx, though it's included as part of
Queens Community Board 1 and has a Queens ZIP code. The jail complex, operated by the
New York City Department of Correction, has a budget of $860 million a year, a staff of 10,000 officers and 1,500 civilians to control a yearly inmate population of up to 130,000. The official permanent population of the island, as reported by the
United States Census Bureau, was 12,780 as of the
2000 census.
The island is named after
Abraham Rycken,, a Dutch settler who moved to
Long Island in 1638 and whose descendants owned Rikers Island until 1884, when it was sold to the city for $180,000 and has been used as a jail ever since.
Rikers Island jail
The facility generally holds about 15,000 inmates at a time. The daytime population (including staff) can be 20,000 or more.
The facility, which consists of ten jails, holds local offenders who are awaiting trial and can't afford or can't obtain bail, those serving sentences of one year or less, and those temporarily placed there pending transfer to another facility which doesn't have space.
The only access to the facility is from
Queens, over the unmarked 4,200-foot (1.28 km) three-lane
Francis Buono Bridge, dedicated on
November 22,
1966, by Mayor
John Lindsay. Before the bridge was constructed, the only access to the island was by
ferry. Transportation is also provided by the
Q100 Limited stop bus service, also serving the Riker's Island Parking Lot, the
21st Street-Queensbridge subway station, and the
Queensboro Plaza subway station at
Queensboro Plaza, providing around-the-clock service. There are also privately-operated shuttles that connect the parking lot at the south end to the island. Bus service within the island for visitors visiting inmates is provided by the New York City Department of Correction.
The North Infirmary Command, which used to be called the Rikers Island Infirmary, is used to house inmates requiring extreme protective custody, as well as some regular inmates. The rest of the facilities, all built in the last 67 years, make up this city of jails. Two of these are floating jails. Originally Staten Island ferries, the two floating detention centers are docked off the northern tip of Rikers Island. Each of them has an inmate capacity of 162 and serves as an annex to one of the other jails on the island. There is also the
Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center, a floating barge (described below). New York City's jail system has become something of a small town. There are schools, medical clinics, ball fields, chapels, gyms, drug rehab programs, grocery stores, barbershops, a bakery, a laundromat, a power plant, a track, a tailor shop, a print shop, a bus depot and even a car wash. Rikers Island is the world's largest penal colony.
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History
The island was used as a military training ground for both European American and
African American regiments during the
Civil War. The first regiment to use the Island was the
Ninth New York Infantry, also known as
Hawkin's Zouaves, which arrived there on May 15, 1861. Hawkins' Zouaves was followed by the
36th New York State Volunteers on June 23, which was followed by the
Anderson Zouaves on July 15, 1861. The Anderson Zouaves were commanded by
John Lafayette Riker who was related to the owners of the island. The camp of the Anderson Zouaves was named Camp Astor in compliment to millionaire
John Jacob Astor Jr. who provided funding for the army, and who appears to have made a significant contribution to the raising of the Anderson Zouaves in particular, with the Astor ladies being credited with the manufacture of the zouave uniforms worn by the recruits of this regiment. Despite the fact that Riker's Island was subsequently used by numerous Civil War regiments, the name "Camp Astor" was specific to the Anderson Zouaves and didn't become a general name for the military encampment on the island.
The island was bought by New York City from the Ryker family in 1884 for $180,000 and was used as a jail farm.
In 1932, the city opened a jail for men on the island to replace its dilapidated jail on Blackwell's Island (now
Roosevelt Island). Landfill was added to the island in 1954. It enlarged the area of the island to 415 acres, enabling the jail facilities to expand. The original penitentiary building, completed in 1935, is now a maximum security facility called James A. Thomas Center.
During Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani's term as mayor of New York, the jail filled to overflowing, and an 800-bed barge was installed on the
East River to accommodate the extra inmates. The barge is called the
Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center, or V.C.B.C./ VCBC, and was formerly known as MTF3 (for Maritime Facility #3). VCBC is located at 1 Halleck St, Bronx, NY 10474, at the end of
Hunts Point, near the recently relocated
Fulton Fish Market.
A drawing by artist
Salvador Dalí, done as an apology because he was unable to attend a talk about art for the prisoners at Rikers Island, hung in the inmate dining room from 1965 to 1981, when it was moved to the prison lobby for safekeeping. The drawing was stolen in March 2003 and replaced with a fake: three Correction Officers, and an Assistant Deputy Warden were arrested and charged, and though three later pleaded guilty and one was acquitted, the drawing hasn't been recovered.
Abuses and injustices
According to statistics from the 1992 book
Inside Rikers: Stories from the World's Largest Penal Colony by Jennifer Wynn, less than 25% of inmates on "The Rock" were arrested for any form of violent crime—rather mostly drug offenses—with 80% having a history of substance abuse; with 92% being black or Hispanic, even though these ethnic groups comprise less than 50% of the New York City population; with 25% having been treated for mental illness, making Rikers the U.S.'s largest "mental institution"; and 30% of whom come from the city's population of homeless. Literally one-quarter of the approximately 15,000 resident inmates (the annual turnover is around 130,000 prisoners) face paupers' bails of $500 or less.
CNN reported in 1998 that "Inmates at the Rikers Island jail complex for years have been subjected to impromptu beatings and planned assaults by guards, according to court papers. In the last decade, Rikers inmates have been brutally beaten, some suffering broken bones, ruptured eardrums or severe head injuries, The New York Times reported Sunday. Details of the beatings emerged from court papers, mainly as a result of a recent court settlement that spelled out reforms." Source:
Rikers Island guards beat inmates for years CNN, August 16th, 1998.
Ten years later abuses continue to be pervasive despite repeated indictments and convictions of corrections officials, and court orders. In February 2008, jail guard Lloyd Nicholson was indicted after he allegedly used a select group of teenage inmates as enforcers under a regimen he called "the program" as well as allegedly beating inmates himself. Source:
Rikers Island Fight Club by Graham Rayman,
Village Voice, April 8th, 2008.
On 4 October 2007, the New York City Department of Corrections conceded that "tens of thousands of nonviolent inmates taken to Rikers Island on misdemeanor charges had been wrongly strip-searched in violation of a 2002 court settlement, and were entitled to payment for damages. As many as 150,000 such inmates have been searched at Rikers Island since 2002, lawyers for the inmates said... The policy was kept in place despite a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruling in 2001 that strip-searches of misdemeanor suspects were illegal, unless officials suspected that they were carrying contraband..."
[Leadlawyer Richard D.] Emery charged in his papers that department officials "repeatedly resorted to lying to cover up deliberate indifference to the continued practice of humiliating detainees by forcing them to strip naked in groups." Source:
City to Pay Damages for Strip Searches by Alan Feuer, '
The New York Times, October 5th, 2007.
Excerpt from Nigel Parry's first person journal series written in Rikers during early 2007, From Ramallah to Rikers Island: "During one dorm search, later on in my experience on Rikers Island, prison guards threatened to force us—already in underwear—to strip completely and stand "with your pecker against the guy in front of you's ass" if we either talked or didn't move quickly enough to a designated area against a wall. That and the image of the NYPD detective who took me to the Tombs, taking camera phone footage of a drunk who had passed out standing up, was somewhat disturbingly reminiscent of Abu Ghraib."
"If you think health care in America is bad, you should look at mental health care," says Steve Leifman, who works as a special advisor on criminal justice and mental health for the Florida Supreme Court. More Americans receive mental health treatment in prisons and jails than hospitals or treatment centers. In fact, the country's largest psychiatric facility isn't even a hospital, it's a prison — New York City's Rikers Island, which holds an estimated 3,000 mentally ill inmates at any given time. Fifty years ago, the U.S. had nearly 600,000 state hospital beds for people suffering from mental illness. Today, because of federal and state funding cuts, that number has dwindled to 40,000. When the government began closing state-run hospitals in the 1980s, people suffering from mental illness had nowhere to go. Without proper treatment and care, many ended up in the last place anyone wants to be. "The one institution that can never say no to anybody is jail," Leifman says. "And what's worse, now we've given [thementally ill] a criminal record." Source: "De-Criminalizing Mental Illness", M.J. Stephey, TIME, 8 August 2007.
Cultural references
- In the movie Carlito's Way, Sean Penn's character is involved in a plot to assist in the escape of the New York Italian Mob boss from Riker's Island via boat.
- A fictional prison in the Marvel Comics universe, Ryker's Island is a stronghold for containing both human and superhuman detainees. It is based on the real life location.
- In the video game, TK's goal in one mission is to bust Candy out of Rikers.
- In the Marvel video game The Punisher, Jigsaw is imprisoned at Ryker's Island. The main character, Frank Castle, later infiltrates the prison, which leads to a large shoot-out and riot in which Jigsaw is eventually battled.
- In Futurama's 5th season episode Three Hundred Big Boys, Kif is sent to 'Commander Riker's Island', an obvious play on Rikers Island. The name is a reference to the character Commander William Riker, from the TV series, played by Jonathan Frakes.
- In the Law and Order television franchise, convicts are often sent to Rikers Island for sex crimes and homicides. In many episodes, the detectives visit Rikers to question inmates, although the actual scenes are taped on a set as well as in the now-closed "Queen's House" jail.
- In Stephen Adly Guirgis' play Jesus Hopped the "A" Train, the character Lucius Jenkins is detained at Riker's Island.
- In a Season 1 episode of Chappelle's Show, during the sketch "PopCopy", a store clerk (played by Michael Rapaport) references that he doesn't care about his reputation and that he'll go to Riker's for three or four years "just to prove my (his) point".
- In the 2006 theatrical film "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" the character of Antonio (based on a real person) is sent to Riker's Island after he murders a street hood. His friends are told to visit him there, which they never do.
- In 1972 The Family Dogg recorded a song Riker's Island (sometimes credited as Rykers Island) about a man sent to the jail on their second album 'The View From Rowland's Head'. It was also the B side of their single Sweet America.
- The 1980 Jim Carroll Band song "People who Died" mentions Rikers in the verse: "Brian got busted on a narco rap/He beat the rap by rattin' on some bikers/He said, 'Hey, I know it's dangerous, but it sure beats Riker's'/But the next day he got offed by the very same bikers".
- The 1990 Kool G Rap song "Rikers Island" tells of the facility and its notoriety within New York.
- The Sega Saturn video game Three Dirty Dwarves uses Riker's Island as a level, where the dwarves fight off escaping prisoners and prison guards.
- In the book "Monster", Steve Harmon is sent to Rikers Island while he's awaiting trial for a murder charge.
- In the book On The Road, the character Elmer Hassel is mentioned as being on Riker's Island.
- Is often mentioned, and has been visited twice in CBS crime drama
- The video for the Public Enemy song "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos," which is about a prison riot, was filmed at Rikers Island.
- Tupac Shakur, who was incarcerated there once, mentions "Rikers Island" in several of his songs. In his song called Old School (recorded before his arrest), he says "A young nigga tryin to stay away from Riker's Isle," and he also addresses the facility's staff at the end of the popular song Picture Me Rollin' (after his release from the facility).
- Junior Reid and Poor Righteous Teachers mention "Rikers Island" in their song called "Dreadful Day" which is based on prison life.
- Cocoa Tea and Nardo Ranks have a song called "Rikers Island", based on the institute.
- Criminals in Gargoyles (TV series) were commonly taken to an island prison known as "Riker's Lockup".
- The WWE tag team Cryme Tyme was kayfabe put into Rikers' as an explanation for their absence after their real-life firing and rehiring.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Rikers Island'.
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