New York island jail at breaking point as inmates seize control

Rikers correctional facility is so dangerous that guards refuse to go to work and city has stopped their pay

IT IS New York’s most notorious prison, often described as the world’s largest penal colony, housing criminals and mental health patients on an isolated outcrop sandwiched between the Bronx and Queens.

But Rikers Island has descended into lawlessness after inmates reportedly seized control from helpless guards, murdered fellow prisoners and crashed a bus into its outer walls.

Inmates have snatched keys from guards and freed fellow prisoners and control routes between units on the island, while staff stay away in fear of their lives, according to an investigation.

Almost a dozen people have died there this year and stabbings are commonplace amid the mayhem.

The jail, which consistently ranks as one of the worst correctional facilities in the US, has descended into turmoil during the coronavirus pandemic.

The disorder has been exacerbated in recent months by an acute staffing crisis and a slowdown in court proceedings because of Covid-19, with one jail watchdog saying that there had been “a complete breakdown of operations” and politicians and activists calling for it to be permanently closed.

“In our office’s 50 years of monitoring the city jails, this is one of the most dangerous times we have seen,” Mary Lynne Werlwas, a lawyer and the director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society, said.

The jail houses about 4,800 inmates, many of whom are suffering from mental illness, on an island between the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx.

Prisoners have seized near total control over entire areas of the island, deciding who can enter and leave them, the New York Times reported. In August, a man awaiting trial there snatched keys from a prison officer, set free another detainee and then slashed the guard’s face and neck with a knife.

The prison’s predicament garnered national attention after it was reported that 11 prisoners at the facility had died this year, half of them suicides. There were also 39 stabbings in August, compared with seven in August last year, according to federal monitors.

Jessica Ramos, a New York State senator, said that politicians touring Rikers last month witnessed a man trying to kill himself.

At one point during the summer, some 3,000 of the jail’s 8,500 guards were on sick leave. Last month, New York City started suspending guards for 30 days, without pay, if they refused to come to work.

Last week, city officials said that the staffing crisis was so dire it was trying to

‘In 50 years of monitoring the city’s jails, this is one of the most dangerous times we have seen’

entice recently retired correctional officers to return to work.

The problems are not all the result of staffing and prison watchdogs point to years of gross mismanagement and underfunding.

In another example, a prisoner discovered in September that a metal grate in the wall of his cell was so rickety he could kick it down, so he climbed through the opening and stabbed his neighbour.

“Rikers has long been dysfunctional, decrepit and dangerous,” said Zachary Katznelson, the executive director of a research and advocacy organisation called Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform.

“What we see today is next level. It is an inability to deliver even the basic services – something we haven’t seen in a long time, if ever,” Mr Katznelson told the New York Times.