Rikers: For the Prisoners or for the Public?

The City Council approved plans to shut down Rikers Island, home to New York’s infamous 400-acre prison complex, on October 17. Notorious for its mismanagement and cruel conditions, the complex has been the subject of rumors of an impending shutdown for the last two years. It is only now that Mayor Bill de Blasio has received enough support to put his plan into action and potentially reform New York’s broken criminal justice system.

Conflict over Rikers Island began long before it became a jail complex. Magistrate Richard Riker, who owned the island in the 1800s, used his Magisterial position to sign off on paperwork that allowed free black men, women, and children to be kidnapped from New York City’s streets and trafficked down South as slaves. This operation continued until the Civil War, when the island was used as a training ground for Union Army regiments and strangely enough, a slaughterhouse. New York City bought the island with the intent of building a workhouse in 1884, but it lay unused until 1932, when the island was turned into the jail complex that it is today. Containing nearly 10,000 inmates and with over 100,000 admissions a year, Rikers Island is the nation’s second largest jail facility. Lo and behold, Rikers is infamous for two things: its lack of humane treatment and the disproportionate size of innocent minorities held in the prison, which proves to have debilitating effects on its victims.

One such prisoner was Kalief Browder, who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. In the spring of 2010, when he was 16, Browder was arrested for a robbery that he insisted he had not committed. Regardless, he could not afford the $3000 bail and was away from his legal representative, forcing him to wait nearly three years for a trial. During that time, he spent two years in solitary confinement, where he attempted suicide several times because of the mental and physical abuse to which he was subjected by officers and other prisoners at Rikers. His experiences haunted him, leaving him unable to adjust to life outside of jail, and in June 2015, he committed suicide.

Stories like Browder’s have exacerbated the need for reform in Rikers, which de Blasio seeks to address in his new $8 billion plan, replacing the Rikers complex with four smaller jails, one each in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx by 2026. The jails would be in open areas such as a subway yard in Queens and in the shadow of City Hall in Manhattan, surrounded by the residents of New York City. Each would hold 3,300 prisoners daily, downsizing the number of inmates by over half, and provide job training, mental health counseling, and education services. They would also be closer to courthouses, which de Blasio predicts will speed up court hearings, as defendants would be closer to their legal representatives. While Browder’s situation could not be reversed, those of others could potentially be prevented.

Though the stories of prisoners such as Browder’s are indeed pitiful and disgusting, dividing the jail into four smaller jails will not have any impact on its present conditions. While some argue that the shutdown of Rikers will rid New York of a symbol of discrimination and cruelty, the symbol may live on in the new jails. Without some preventative measure instilled in the new jails, there is nothing to prevent the continuation of abuse against prisoners. Thus, reforms done within Rikers are a better alternative to the building of four new jails with conditions that may parallel those of the past.

The modifications of Rikers itself would be a top priority. Many of those who were unfortunately housed in Rikers faced harsh, severe punishments compared to the crimes that they may have committed. The intentions of these new jails are to house more space for prisoners and provide more humane spaces for them, both of which the city could implement within Rikers without using more of its resources. The environment of Rikers is unbelievable filthy—grime over all the walls, dead rodents, and severe overcrowding. Therefore, creating an initiative to refurbish and cleanse the conditions of Rikers would prove to be more cost-effective and beneficial for the public and prisoners in the long run. If housing were to remain a problem, offering to build other facilities on the island could prove to be far more efficient and worthwhile than risking an $8 billion project that faces incredible controversy.

The public good must also be taken into account. Most people have no desire to lower the property values of their neighborhood, let alone diminish their public safety with the establishment of a prison in their own backyards; one key function of the criminal justice system is to incapacitate criminals and keep them from continuing to perform heinous acts in the community. Not only does this go against the purpose of the criminal justice system, but it also causes underlying problems to real estate. As is the case with electrical plants, sewage treatment plants, and homeless shelters, nobody wants to live near a jail, which means that residents will be inclined to move away, and the value of properties near the jail would decrease, leading to a downward spiral in real estate. For these reasons, City Council member Robert F. Holden has criticized the feasibility of the plan to close Rikers and build new jails. As he has said, no neighborhood would willingly host such a jail, making it key to reform and invest in changes in the deteriorating Rikers Island facility.

Dispersing Rikers prisoners and building intimidating jails in four of the five boroughs would be detrimental to the public. The cost of this project is an incredible $8 billion, which seems impractical at the very least—and wasteful and foolish at the very most. The unsanitariness and overcrowding of Rikers are undeniably inhumane, especially with traumatizing cases such as Browder’s, but the addition of four new jails is not the solution. Conditions would not necessarily change and could potentially get worse. I agree with City Councilman Holden that modernizing Rikers is a fairer and beneficial plan than spreading prisons across the city, which would unfairly burden the neighborhoods in which they are built. More importantly, an initiative to improve Rikers’s conditions would ensure prisoners of their basic human rights and potentially create more living space for prisoners on the island. Rikers can be improved without imposing severe negative impacts on our communities; improving Rikers to make it more humane is necessary, but downgrading our own communities and risking the potential failure of a controversial project to accomplish this is not.