Rikers Island
Encyclopedia
Rikers Island is New York City
's main jail
complex, 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 is 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 7,000 officers and 1,500 civilians to control an inmate population of 14,000. The official permanent population of the island, as reported by the United States Census Bureau
, was 11,355 as of 2009.
The island is thought to be 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. It has been used as a jail ever since.
Facilities located on the island include Otis Bantum Correctional Center (OBCC), Robert N. Davoren Complex (RNDC, formerly ARDC), Anna M. Kross Center (AMKC), George Motchan Detention Center (GMDC), North Infirmary Command (NIC), Rose M. Singer Center (RMSC), Eric M. Taylor Center (EMTC, formerly CIFM), James A. Thomas Center (JATC), George R. Vierno Center (GRVC) and West Facility (WF). Bantum, Kross, Motchan, and Vierno house detained male adults. Taylor houses sentenced male adolescents and adults. Davoren primarily houses male inmates who are of ages 16 through 18. Singer houses detained and sentenced female adolescents and adults. North Infirmary primarily houses inmates who require medical attention from an infirmary. West Facility houses inmates who have diseases that are contagious
.
The average daily inmate population on the island is about 14,000. The daytime population (including staff) can be 20,000 or more.
The only access to the island 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, which runs around-the-clock. 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, inmates with special health needs, mentally ill inmates, and inmates undergoing drug detoxification, as well as some regular inmates. The rest of the facilities, all built in the last 67 years, make up this city of jails. 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 has been referred to as the world's largest penal colony. For comparison, Europe
's largest correctional facility, Fleury-Mérogis Prison
sits on 180 acre (0.7284348 km²) and houses 3,800 prisoners.
The island was used as a military training ground during the Civil War
. The first regiment to use the Island was the Ninth New York Infantry, also known as Hawkins' 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. Rikers Island was subsequently used by numerous other Civil War regiments, but the name "Camp Astor" was specific to the Anderson Zouaves and did not 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. The facility was commonly referred to by New Yorkers as simply "The Island"; for example, that is what it is called in O. Henry
's 1905 short story The Cop and the Anthem.
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 original 90 acres (364,217.4 m²) island to 415 acres (1.7 km²), enabling the jail facilities to expand. The original penitentiary building, completed in 1935, was called HDM or the House of Detention for Men; it became a maximum security facility called the James A. Thomas Center and closed due to structural issues in 2000.
During Mayor David Dinkins
' 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
(VCBC), and is also known simply as "The Boat". VCBC is located at 1 Halleck St, Bronx, NY 10474, at the end of Hunts Point
, near the recently relocated Fulton Fish Market
. The keel for the Vernon C. Bain was laid in 1989 at the Avondale Shipyard
in New Orleans. Upon completion, VCBC was towed up from Louisiana to its current mooring, and attached to two Crandall Arms. It opened for use as a facility in 1992. Originally it had been leased to the NYC Department of Juvenile Justice, while Spofford Juvenile Detention Center
was under reconstruction. VCBC was formerly known as Maritime Facility #3 (MTF3); facilities 1 and 2 were reconstructed British military transport barges, or BIBBYs (British Industries Boat Building Yard), used during the Falklands War
, both of which could house 800 soldiers, but only 200 inmates after their conversion. MTFs 1 and 2 were anchored on either side of Manhattan at East River pier 17, near 20th street, in the Hudson River. In addition, there were two smaller 1930s-era Staten Island Ferry
boats, both converted to house 162 inmates each. The ferry boats were sold for salvage about 2003, and the owner of the shipyard that built VCBC, Avondale Shipyard
, bought the two BIBBYs. VCBC is the only vessel of its type in the world. Prior to modification for use by New York City, it cost $161 million to construct. The initial plan for acquiring the vessel, because of the way New York City makes capital purchases, had to begin at least five years before the keel was laid, during the tenure of Ed Koch
.
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 in J.A.T.C. (HDM) from 1965 to 1981, when it was moved to the prison lobby in A.M.K.C. (C95) 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 pled guilty and one was acquitted, the drawing has not been recovered.
, known as "gay housing," was closed in December 2005 citing a need to improve security. The unit had opened in the 1970s due to concerns about abuse of LGBT prisoners in pretrial detention
. The New York City Department of Corrections' widely criticized plan was to restructure the classification of prisoners and create a new protective custody
system which would include 23-hour-per-day lockdown
(identical to that mandated for disciplinary reasons) for moving vulnerable inmates to other facilities. Whereas formerly all that was required was a declaration of homosexuality
or the appearance of being transgender
, inmates wanting protective custody would now be required to request it in a special hearing
.
On October 4, 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..."
[Lead lawyer 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."
In an alleged July 2008 rape case reported by The Village Voice
on August 5, 2008, the alleged victim claimed "that someone entered her cell in the 1,000-bed Rose M. Singer Center while she was asleep, sometime before 6 a.m. on July 3. She says the intruder (or intruders) bound and gagged her with bedsheets and then used a dildo-like object to sexually assault her. Other inmates may have acted as lookouts during the alleged assault. The woman, who was being held on grand-larceny charges for the past three months, was discovered at about 6 a.m. by an Officer and a Captain who were touring the building. The Officer saw her lying on her back on the floor of her cell with bedsheets wrapped around her neck, mouth, and legs. She had also been blindfolded. The incident was reported to central command at 7:30 a.m., and the woman was transported to the Elmhurst Hospital Center. Because she didn't share a cell with anyone, a major question is how the alleged assault happened in the first place. Officials won't talk about the investigation, and there's no word on whether any arrests have been made."
The same Village Voice article also lists a roll call of 2008 scandals at Rikers, including the case of Officers who allegedly passed accused cop killer Lee Woods marijuana, cigarettes, and alcohol; the February indictment of corrections officer Lloyd Nicholson who used inmates as "enforcers", and the April 27 suicide of 18-year-old Steven Morales (who had killed his infant daughter for crying too much) in the high-security closed-custody unit.
On February 3, 2009, The New York Times
reported that "the pattern of cases suggests that city correction officials have been aware of a problem in which Rikers Officers have acquiesced or encouraged violence among inmates." The Times added that "There have been at least seven lawsuits filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan accusing Officers of complicity or acquiescence in inmate violence at Rikers, a complex of 10 detention facilities which, along with several other jails around the city, hold about 13,000 prisoners, most of whom are pretrial detainees. None of the seven suits have gone to trial. In the three that were settled, the city admitted no liability or wrongdoing."
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's main jail
Jail
A jail is a short-term detention facility in the United States and Canada.Jail may also refer to:In entertainment:*Jail , a 1966 Malayalam movie*Jail , a 2009 Bollywood movie...
complex, as well as the name of the 413.17 acre (1.672 km²) island on which it sits, in the East River
East River
The East River is a tidal strait in New York City. It connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates Long Island from the island of Manhattan and the Bronx on the North American mainland...
between Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
and the mainland Bronx, adjacent to the runways of LaGuardia Airport
LaGuardia Airport
LaGuardia Airport is an airport located in the northern part of Queens County on Long Island in the City of New York. The airport is located on the waterfront of Flushing Bay and Bowery Bay, and borders the neighborhoods of Astoria, Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst. The airport was originally...
. The island itself is part of the borough of the Bronx, though it is included as part of Queens Community Board 1
Queens Community Board 1
The Queens Community Board 1 is a local advisory group in New York City, encompassing the neighborhoods of Astoria, Old Astoria, Long Island City, Queensbridge, Ditmars, Ravenswood, Steinway, Garden Bay, and Woodside, in the Borough of Queens...
and has a Queens ZIP code. The jail complex, operated by the New York City Department of Correction
New York City Department of Correction
The New York City Department of Correction is responsible for New York City's inmates, housing the majority of them on Rikers Island. It employs 9,500 uniformed officers and 1,400 civilian staff, has 543 vehicles, and processes over 100,000 new inmates every year, retaining a population of inmates...
, has a budget of $860 million a year, a staff of 7,000 officers and 1,500 civilians to control an inmate population of 14,000. The official permanent population of the island, as reported by the United States Census Bureau
United States Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau is the government agency that is responsible for the United States Census. It also gathers other national demographic and economic data...
, was 11,355 as of 2009.
The island is thought to be named after Abraham Rycken, a Dutch settler who moved to Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
in 1638 and whose descendants owned Rikers Island until 1884, when it was sold to the city for $180,000. It has been used as a jail ever since.
The complex and its facilities
Even though it is run by the NY DOC, Rikers Island is a jail and not a prison. The Rikers Island complex, which consists of ten jails, holds local offenders who are awaiting trial and cannot afford or cannot obtain bail or were not given bail from a judge, those serving sentences of one year or less, and those temporarily placed there pending transfer to another facility.Facilities located on the island include Otis Bantum Correctional Center (OBCC), Robert N. Davoren Complex (RNDC, formerly ARDC), Anna M. Kross Center (AMKC), George Motchan Detention Center (GMDC), North Infirmary Command (NIC), Rose M. Singer Center (RMSC), Eric M. Taylor Center (EMTC, formerly CIFM), James A. Thomas Center (JATC), George R. Vierno Center (GRVC) and West Facility (WF). Bantum, Kross, Motchan, and Vierno house detained male adults. Taylor houses sentenced male adolescents and adults. Davoren primarily houses male inmates who are of ages 16 through 18. Singer houses detained and sentenced female adolescents and adults. North Infirmary primarily houses inmates who require medical attention from an infirmary. West Facility houses inmates who have diseases that are contagious
Contagious disease
A contagious disease is a subset category of infectious diseases , which are easily transmitted by physical contact with the person suffering the disease, or by their secretions or objects touched by them....
.
The average daily inmate population on the island is about 14,000. The daytime population (including staff) can be 20,000 or more.
The only access to the island is from Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
, over the unmarked 4,200-foot (1.28 km) three-lane Francis Buono Bridge, dedicated on November 22, 1966, by Mayor John Lindsay
John Lindsay
John Vliet Lindsay was an American politician, lawyer and broadcaster who was a U.S. Congressman, Mayor of New York City, candidate for U.S...
. Before the bridge was constructed, the only access to the island was by ferry
Ferry
A ferry is a form of transportation, usually a boat, but sometimes a ship, used to carry primarily passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo as well, across a body of water. Most ferries operate on regular, frequent, return services...
. Transportation is also provided by the Q100 Limited stop bus service, which runs around-the-clock. 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, inmates with special health needs, mentally ill inmates, and inmates undergoing drug detoxification, as well as some regular inmates. The rest of the facilities, all built in the last 67 years, make up this city of jails. There is also the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center
Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center
thumb|Entrance in [[Hunts Point, Bronx]]The Vernon C. Bain Center is an 800-bed jail barge used to hold inmates for New York City as part of the New York City Department of Corrections as part of the vast Rikers Island jail complex...
, 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 has been referred to as the world's largest penal colony. For comparison, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
's largest correctional facility, Fleury-Mérogis Prison
Fleury-Mérogis Prison
Fleury-Mérogis Prison is a prison in France, located in the town of Fleury-Mérogis, in the southern suburbs of Paris. With 3,800 prisoners, it is the largest prison in Europe ...
sits on 180 acre (0.7284348 km²) and houses 3,800 prisoners.
History
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. The first regiment to use the Island was the Ninth New York Infantry, also known as Hawkins' 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
John Lafayette Riker
John Lafayette Riker was an American attorney and an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was killed in action at the Battle of Fair Oaks during the Peninsula Campaign.-Early life:...
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.
John Jacob Astor III
John Jacob Astor III was the elder son of William Backhouse Astor, Sr. and the wealthiest member of the Astor family in his generation...
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. Rikers Island was subsequently used by numerous other Civil War regiments, but the name "Camp Astor" was specific to the Anderson Zouaves and did not 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. The facility was commonly referred to by New Yorkers as simply "The Island"; for example, that is what it is called in O. Henry
O. Henry
O. Henry was the pen name of the American writer William Sydney Porter . O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.-Early life:...
's 1905 short story The Cop and the Anthem.
In 1932, the city opened a jail for men on the island to replace its dilapidated jail on Blackwell's Island (now Roosevelt Island
Roosevelt Island
Roosevelt Island, known as Welfare Island from 1921 to 1973, and before that Blackwell's Island, is a narrow island in the East River of New York City. It lies between the island of Manhattan to its west and the borough of Queens to its east...
). Landfill was added to the island in 1954. It enlarged the original 90 acres (364,217.4 m²) island to 415 acres (1.7 km²), enabling the jail facilities to expand. The original penitentiary building, completed in 1935, was called HDM or the House of Detention for Men; it became a maximum security facility called the James A. Thomas Center and closed due to structural issues in 2000.
During Mayor David Dinkins
David Dinkins
David Norman Dinkins is a former politician from New York City. He was the Mayor of New York City from 1990 through 1993; he was the first and is, to date, the only African American to hold that office.-Early life:...
' term as mayor of New York, the jail filled to overflowing, and an 800-bed barge was installed on the East River
East River
The East River is a tidal strait in New York City. It connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates Long Island from the island of Manhattan and the Bronx on the North American mainland...
to accommodate the extra inmates. The barge is called the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center
Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center
thumb|Entrance in [[Hunts Point, Bronx]]The Vernon C. Bain Center is an 800-bed jail barge used to hold inmates for New York City as part of the New York City Department of Corrections as part of the vast Rikers Island jail complex...
(VCBC), and is also known simply as "The Boat". VCBC is located at 1 Halleck St, Bronx, NY 10474, at the end of Hunts Point
Hunts Point, Bronx
Hunts Point is a low-income neighborhood located on a peninsula in the South Bronx in New York City. It is the location of one of the largest food distribution facilities in the world. The neighborhood is part of Bronx Community Board 2. Its boundaries are the Bruckner Expressway to the west and...
, near the recently relocated Fulton Fish Market
Fulton Fish Market
The Fulton Fish Market is a fish market in The Bronx, New York, United States. It was originally a wing of the Fulton Market, established in 1822 to sell a variety of foodstuffs and produce...
. The keel for the Vernon C. Bain was laid in 1989 at the Avondale Shipyard
Avondale Shipyard
Avondale Shipyard was an independent shipbuilding company, acquired by Litton Industries, in turn acquired by Northrop Grumman Corporation. Now, along with the former Ingalls Shipbuilding, the yard is part of Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding. The yard is located on the West Bank of the Mississippi...
in New Orleans. Upon completion, VCBC was towed up from Louisiana to its current mooring, and attached to two Crandall Arms. It opened for use as a facility in 1992. Originally it had been leased to the NYC Department of Juvenile Justice, while Spofford Juvenile Detention Center
Spofford Juvenile Center
Spofford Juvenile Center was the New York City Department of Juvenile Justice's only Secure Detention center until August 1, 1998 when it was temporarily vacated by the DJJ. It was located in the Bronx borough of New York City...
was under reconstruction. VCBC was formerly known as Maritime Facility #3 (MTF3); facilities 1 and 2 were reconstructed British military transport barges, or BIBBYs (British Industries Boat Building Yard), used during the Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
, both of which could house 800 soldiers, but only 200 inmates after their conversion. MTFs 1 and 2 were anchored on either side of Manhattan at East River pier 17, near 20th street, in the Hudson River. In addition, there were two smaller 1930s-era Staten Island Ferry
Staten Island Ferry
The Staten Island Ferry is a passenger ferry service operated by the New York City Department of Transportation that runs between the boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island.-Overview:...
boats, both converted to house 162 inmates each. The ferry boats were sold for salvage about 2003, and the owner of the shipyard that built VCBC, Avondale Shipyard
Avondale Shipyard
Avondale Shipyard was an independent shipbuilding company, acquired by Litton Industries, in turn acquired by Northrop Grumman Corporation. Now, along with the former Ingalls Shipbuilding, the yard is part of Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding. The yard is located on the West Bank of the Mississippi...
, bought the two BIBBYs. VCBC is the only vessel of its type in the world. Prior to modification for use by New York City, it cost $161 million to construct. The initial plan for acquiring the vessel, because of the way New York City makes capital purchases, had to begin at least five years before the keel was laid, during the tenure of Ed Koch
Ed Koch
Edward Irving "Ed" Koch is an American lawyer, politician, and political commentator. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and three terms as mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989...
.
A drawing by artist Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, 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 in J.A.T.C. (HDM) from 1965 to 1981, when it was moved to the prison lobby in A.M.K.C. (C95) 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 pled guilty and one was acquitted, the drawing has not been recovered.
"Gay housing"
The segregated unit at Rikers for LGBT prisonersLGBT people in prison
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in prisons often face additional challenges as inmates to those of straight, cisgender inmates....
, known as "gay housing," was closed in December 2005 citing a need to improve security. The unit had opened in the 1970s due to concerns about abuse of LGBT prisoners in pretrial detention
Detention of suspects
The detention of suspects is the process of keeping a person who has been arrested in a police-cell, remand prison or other detention centre before trial or sentencing. One criticism of pretrial detention is that eventual acquittal can be a somewhat hollow victory, in that there is no way to...
. The New York City Department of Corrections' widely criticized plan was to restructure the classification of prisoners and create a new protective custody
Protective custody
Protective custody is a type of imprisonment to protect a prisoner from harm, either from outside sources or other prisoners. Many administrators believe the level of violence, or the underlying threat of violence within prisoners, is a chief factor causing the need for PC units...
system which would include 23-hour-per-day lockdown
Lockdown
There are several definitions for the term lockdown, the most common of which pertains to a state of containment or a restriction of progression....
(identical to that mandated for disciplinary reasons) for moving vulnerable inmates to other facilities. Whereas formerly all that was required was a declaration of homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
or the appearance of being transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
, inmates wanting protective custody would now be required to request it in a special hearing
Hearing (law)
In law, a hearing is a proceeding before a court or other decision-making body or officer, such as a government agency.A hearing is generally distinguished from a trial in that it is usually shorter and often less formal...
.
Alleged abuses
In February 2008, Correction Officer Lloyd Nicholson was indicted after he allegedly used a select group of teenage inmates as enforcers under a regime called "the program," as well as allegedly beating inmates himself. However, "The Program" has been known to exist for well over a decade and is unique to the adolescents. The inmates use it as a test for other inmates and system of control amongst themselves.On October 4, 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
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
ruling in 2001 that strip-searches of misdemeanor suspects were illegal, unless officials suspected that they were carrying contraband..."
[Lead lawyer 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."
In an alleged July 2008 rape case reported by The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
on August 5, 2008, the alleged victim claimed "that someone entered her cell in the 1,000-bed Rose M. Singer Center while she was asleep, sometime before 6 a.m. on July 3. She says the intruder (or intruders) bound and gagged her with bedsheets and then used a dildo-like object to sexually assault her. Other inmates may have acted as lookouts during the alleged assault. The woman, who was being held on grand-larceny charges for the past three months, was discovered at about 6 a.m. by an Officer and a Captain who were touring the building. The Officer saw her lying on her back on the floor of her cell with bedsheets wrapped around her neck, mouth, and legs. She had also been blindfolded. The incident was reported to central command at 7:30 a.m., and the woman was transported to the Elmhurst Hospital Center. Because she didn't share a cell with anyone, a major question is how the alleged assault happened in the first place. Officials won't talk about the investigation, and there's no word on whether any arrests have been made."
The same Village Voice article also lists a roll call of 2008 scandals at Rikers, including the case of Officers who allegedly passed accused cop killer Lee Woods marijuana, cigarettes, and alcohol; the February indictment of corrections officer Lloyd Nicholson who used inmates as "enforcers", and the April 27 suicide of 18-year-old Steven Morales (who had killed his infant daughter for crying too much) in the high-security closed-custody unit.
On February 3, 2009, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reported that "the pattern of cases suggests that city correction officials have been aware of a problem in which Rikers Officers have acquiesced or encouraged violence among inmates." The Times added that "There have been at least seven lawsuits filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan accusing Officers of complicity or acquiescence in inmate violence at Rikers, a complex of 10 detention facilities which, along with several other jails around the city, hold about 13,000 prisoners, most of whom are pretrial detainees. None of the seven suits have gone to trial. In the three that were settled, the city admitted no liability or wrongdoing."
External links
- Description of the 10 jails on Rikers.
- The Jail Inferno, by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal, Summer 2009
- http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-show_geoid=Y&-tree_id=4001&-_showChild=Y&-context=dt&-errMsg=&-all_geo_types=N&-mt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_P001&-redoLog=false&-transpose=N&-search_map_config=|b=50|l=en|t=4001|zf=0.0|ms=sel_00dec|dw=0.05330623177477046|dh=0.030289650719350046|dt=gov.census.aff.domain.map.EnglishMapExtent|if=gif|cx=-73.88421800202333|cy=40.79177413228427|zl=3|pz=3|bo=318:317:316:314:313:323:319|bl=362:393:358:357:356:355:354|ft=350:349:335:389:388:332:331|fl=381:403:204:380:369:379:368|g=01000US&-PANEL_ID=p_dt_geo_map&-_lang=en&-geo_id=100$10000US360050001009000&-geo_id=100$10000US360050001009001&-CONTEXT=dt&-format=&-search_results=100$10000US360050516009017&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_URikers Island: Blocks 9000 and 9001, Block Group 9, Census Tract 1, Bronx County, New York] United States Census Bureau
- http://www.nyc24.org/2003/islands/zone2/rikershistory.html
- http://www.nyc24.org/2003/islands/zone2/rikers-index.html
- Department of Correction Facilities on Rikers Island
- Map of Rikers Island.
- "Guards charged in Dali theft" – (BBC)
- Firsthand Accounts of Ex-Inmates of Rikers Island
- "History of New York City Department of Corrections"
- "Rikers Island guards beat inmates for years" – (CNN, 1998)
- "From Ramallah to Rikers Island" – A New Journal Series by Nigel Parry from the World's Largest Penal Colony, 2008