rikers island jail tour

• Visit a Person in Custody
• Visit Schedule
• Visit Transportation
• Visiting with Children
• Visitors' Dress Code
• Visitor Satisfaction Survey

Visitor Transportation

The City provides free visitor transportation to and from Rikers at the following locations:

All persons 16 years of age and older must present valid current identification.

Rikers Visit buses are ADA compliant and staffed by drivers with Vision Zero training. In-Person Visits are  available on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Rikers Visit Bus schedule The typical one-way route time is 45 min for the Harlem stop and 60 min for the Brooklyn stop. This is subject to changing traffic conditions and therefore times may vary from those provided in the schedule as we expand this new service.

Call 311 for information about Rikers Visit Bus service.

What to Know When Visiting a Loved One at the Rikers Island Jail

By Kim Kelly

New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex has earned a reputation for brutality, violence , and neglect in its 85 years of existence. As the second-largest facility of its kind in the U.S., Rikers’s very name — an angular switchblade of a word — has long struck fear into the hearts of those sentenced to make that long, lonely trip over the East River to the facility. There are currently about 4,100 people incarcerated in Rikers. Historically, the majority of those held at the facility have not yet been convicted of any crime; they’ve been stuck behind bars while they await trial because they’re unable to post bail — in other words, just because they’re poor.

At one point, 16-year-old Kalief Browder was one of them. The Bronx teen was held on Rikers for three years, without a trial or conviction, for allegedly stealing a backpack — a charge that was eventually dismissed. Much of that time was spent in solitary confinement, a practice that has long been condemned as torture . Shortly after Browder’s release in 2015, he died by suicide. Just last year, Layleen Polanco, a trans woman living with epilepsy, died from complications of the disease after being placed in solitary confinement.

Now, one of my favorite people in the world is in there too. Since October, David Campbell has been locked inside those forbidding walls, doing his best to survive what New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s own lawyer, Alphonso David, has called “a savage and inhumane jail that has ruined the lives of too many New Yorkers.” As a result, I’ve seen firsthand what it’s like to visit a loved one on Rikers Island in 2020.

Following years of campaigning by prison abolitionists and other opponents of mass incarceration, the New York City Council is moving forward with an $8 billion plan to shut down Rikers for good, replacing the massive complex with smaller facilities spread throughout four of the city’s five boroughs. (Activists oppose the construction of those new jails too.) For now, with the shut-down process in its early phases and bogged down by numerous hurdles, Rikers is still standing, and those of us who have friends and family inside its walls must continue to make the arduous journey to visit them. And trust me, it’s arduous . The entire system seems set up to make visitation as difficult as possible, but I’ll explain it, step-by-step, to prepare anyone who finds themself needing to make that trip.

The first time we go visit David, my boyfriend and I leave south Brooklyn at 11:30 a.m. It’s a little after 1 p.m. by the time we get up to 21st Avenue in Queens to catch the special Q100 bus to Rikers. The sign that welcomes you to the island is a gaudy hodgepodge of patriotic symbols, and one big banner declares the prison “ Home of New York City’s Boldest .” We cross the bridge, taking in a panoramic view of the city before the jail complex’s jutting walls and strands of razor wire come into view.

Once the bus stops, a corrections officer comes onboard and reads off a list of items that are considered contraband, telling us to leave any such items on the bus, no questions asked. We go into the first security building, where we are lined up on opposite sides of an invisible line and sniffed at by a hulking police dog. The atmosphere that greets us as soon as we enter the complex suggests that we — the visitors — are on thin ice too, and any wrong move would cost us. It’s nerve-racking.

We file back out into the cold to another building. A guard points us to rows of creaky yellow lockers and tells us to stow our personal possessions — phones, toiletries, purses, Metrocards. We’re ushered into yet another building to go through the first of three rounds of metal detectors. I was especially nervous about this step because of Rikers’s notoriously strict dress code . Clothing is strictly policed , and showing up in anything deemed too tight, revealing, or the wrong color will cost you a visit unless you consent to wear a “cover-up garment” — an oversized neon T-shirt . I was mostly concerned about the restriction on jewelry; only wedding rings and religious necklaces are permitted, and I currently have 13 piercings on my face and body. The day before, I swapped out my metal pieces for glass retainers, and was hoping the guards wouldn’t notice them. Luckily, I make it through, though I am still unsure what threat a nose ring could possibly pose.

We then register with a corrections officer, turning over our IDs, giving our fingerprints (which is apparently optional but I was too nervous to risk gumming up the process), and taking a photo. The officer prints out paper passes with our photo, names, and David’s information and tells us to go wait for another bus. TMZ is blaring on a wall-mounted TV. There’s no indication of when the bus is coming, and no one provides us with any further directions, so we continue to follow along behind more seasoned visitors like anxious ducklings.

The bus to the Robert N. Davoren Center finally shows up, and the drive takes two minutes; we literally just cross a parking lot. We line up outside the door, waiting in below-freezing temperatures. Once inside, we’re ushered into a small room papered with warnings about smuggling in contraband. Eventually, the doors are unlocked and one by one we present our papers again, go through yet another metal detector, have our hands stamped with U.V.-light ink, and enter another waiting room with more lockers where we store our jackets (you’re only allowed to have one layer of clothing in the visiting room).

At this point, I tell one officer that I’m entitled to a two-hour visit because I’m traveling from out of state. He peers at my New Jersey state ID and my Chinatown bus receipt, and denies my request. I remove my belt and shoes a final time to pass through the last metal detector, following a female officer’s request to pull the band of my bra away from my body, pull up my pants legs, and pull down my socks. I pass into the final waiting room, consumed with anxiety as I wait for my boyfriend to join me.

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Inside, a big wall-mounted flat screen is stuck on an empty PowerPoint slide. The other visitors, most of whom are women, stare at the walls. The majority are wearing sweatpants or jeans with plain, neutral-colored shirts. I realize why so many women are wearing Uggs; slip-on shoes would’ve saved us a lot of time. After a few minutes, an officer calls out our friend’s last name. We enter another room and wait.

The grim beige walls are painted with inspirational slogans like “loyalty is royalty.” Across the room, couples hold fast to each other, some sneaking kisses when the officers aren’t looking. Most of the other pairs seem to be in romantic relationships, though there are a few kids there visiting family.

Finally, finally, we get to talk to our friend face-to-face. A low row of plexiglass runs down the middle of the bench, separating us from David and making it awkward to hold hands. He says he’s doing as well as he can. We quickly fall back into our normal patterns, and for a minute, it feels like we’re back at the bar or sitting around my kitchen table — just three people laughing and catching up. Then I reach for my phone to show him some dumb meme, and remember it’s locked up. Reality comes rushing back. Nine months to go.

Our allotted hour passes far too quickly. After what feels like no time at all, an officer strides by and barks, “Visiting time is over! Now!” We hug David tight and tell him we’ll be back soon. As we board the bus, Ginuwine’s “Pony” is playing on the radio, which feels both pleasantly bizarre and unspeakably ghoulish. When we get back to the locker room, I turn on my phone to check the time: 4:17 p.m. We’d somehow been in there for three hours.

With hearts both full and empty at the same time, we head back outside to wait for the Q100. Back over the bridge. Back to our subway stop. Back to our freedom. And next month, we’ll be back to do it all again, until the day we can bring him back over the bridge — away from this hopeless island — with us.

Editor’s note: In an email to Teen Vogue , the Department of Corrections said that a visitor handbook with “all visitor-related information” is available online, and that the security protocols are “designed to ensure the safety and security of DOC personnel, people in our custody, and visitors. The DOC also said they’ve tried to “improve the visiting experience” through measures like creating the visitor handbook and providing children visiting their facilities with crayons and drawing books.

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• 7 on your side investigation

Lawmakers tour Rikers Island, call conditions inside 'inhumane'

RIKERS ISLAND, New York City (WABC) -- More than a dozen local and state lawmakers went on a private tour of Rikers Island Monday morning and used the words "tortuous," "inhumane" and "horrific" to describe the conditions they witnessed inside.

Their tour comes one week after a 7 On Your Side Investigation found an increase in violence taking place inside the jail complex, and some assaulted officers told Eyewitness News they were afraid to go back to work.

"It is a nightmare, a nightmare back there," state Senator Jabari Brisport said.

RELATED | Rikers Island officers 'scared to go back to work' amid spike in violence

One lawmaker said dogs in kennels are treated better than the 6,000 inmates.

"What we saw today was horrific," Assembly member Zohran Mamdani said.

They said some people have been inside the jail intake for more than a week with no access to food, bathrooms and medications and no contact with attorneys.

"The toilets are overflowing onto the floor," Neighborhood Defender Service Managing Director Alice Fonteir said. "They're packed in, 25 people in a cell, without masks, brought off the streets and crammed into here. There are court appearances that have been missed."

The lawmakers and officials pleaded for prosecutors not to send any new inmates to the jail and for Governor Kathy Hochul to sign a new bill that could let up to 1,000 inmates go who are inside on technical and parole violations.

"I just witnessed an attempted suicide," Assembly member Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas said. "Nobody deserves this."

Our 7 On Your Side investigation showed the number of inmates is up, while the amount of officers is down due to retirements and resignations.

As a result, some corrections officers are working up to 25 hours at a time and calling out sick in record numbers.

"Now they want to let all of the criminals out on the street, as if there's not enough crime in the streets," Correction Officers' Benevolent Association President Benny Boscio, Jr., said. "Yes, inmates are suffering. Corrections officers are suffering 25-plus hours working straight, no meal breaks, then they wonder why they're not coming to work."

More 7 On Your Side | Despite Census numbers, COVID pandemic exodus continues in NYC

Most people who toured the complex, along with the union president, called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to take action.

During a press briefing Monday morning, de Blasio said new officers will be hired and the ones who are out sick need to come back to work if they can.

"We, for years and years, have been working to change the situation in a place that's profoundly broken and should've been closed a long time ago and we are closing," de Blasio said.

DO YOU NEED A STORY INVESTIGATED? Dan Krauth and the 7 On Your Side Investigates team at Eyewitness News want to hear from you! Call our confidential tip line 1-877-TIP-NEWS (847-6397) or fill out the form BELOW. You can also contact Dan Krauth directly:

Email your questions, issues, or story ideas to [email protected]

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How to Get to Rikers Island

by Beverly Bird

Published on 23 Aug 2018

Whether a loved one is being held there or you have to visit for other reasons, a trip to Rikers Island definitely isn’t a day at the country club. The island itself totals about 400 acres, and the various prison complexes located there take up much of this land. More than 13,000 inmates and detainees call the place home on any given day, and they receive up to 1,500 visitors on each visiting day. Expect crowds, some waiting and some less-than-pleasant conditions depending on when you visit.

How to get there

There’s only one way on and off Rikers Island: the Rikers Island Bridge. This helps to keep the prison secure, but it can also give visitors fits. The New York City Department of Correction recommends that you take the bus to Rikers: the Q101 from Manhattan, which delivers you directly to the Rikers Island entrance at Hazen Street and 19th Avenue in Queens. From there, transfer to the Q100 line, which takes you over the bridge to the Visit Center.

If you’re determined to drive instead, anticipate having to hunt – and hunt hard – for a parking space. Parking is extremely limited. Take the Triboro Bridge from the Bronx or Manhattan to Queens. If you’re starting out from Brooklyn or Staten Island, take the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In either case, exit at Astoria Boulevard.

Stay alert at that point because the route you must travel has a few twists and turns that come up at short intervals. Bear left on Astoria Boulevard to access 23rd Avenue, then hang a left on 82nd Street and a right on 81st Street, which becomes 19th Avenue. Turn right again at the first traffic light. This puts you on Hazen Street, where the Rikers parking lot is located. You’ll still need to catch the Q100 bus from there to get from the parking lot to the Visit Center.

When to visit

You can visit Rikers five days a week, Wednesday through Sunday. There are no visiting hours on Mondays or Tuesdays.

That’s the easy part. New York City sets a visiting schedule for inmates and detainees, so you can’t just show up at any time on a visiting day and expect to see who you want to see. Check the city’s website for the schedule to find out when your loved one is permitted to receive visitors. The schedule is based on the first letter of his last name, and it can change monthly. You can usually get the schedule on the website for the current month and a month in advance.

Visiting hours are from 1 to 9 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays and from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, but you can expect occasional delays depending on what’s going on at the prison that day.

Security issues and rules

Go first to the Registration Center to check in. You must register before 8 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays and between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Inmates are limited to one visit per day.

You must pass through a “passive” canine search after you’ve registered; in other words, a dog will sniff around your body for hints of contraband. Provide current identification that includes both a photo and your signature. A driver’s license, employer ID card or nondriver’s license ID will suffice if it has both. Otherwise, a passport is acceptable, as well as a Medicare or Food Stamp ID for the state of New York, a U.S. Armed Services ID Card, a resident alien or permanent resident ID card issued by the U.S. Department of Justice, a diplomatic or consulate-issued ID or an IDNYC card. Children under the age of 16 do not need ID if they’re accompanied by an adult over age 18. A visitor who is 16 or 17 may accompany a minor who is the child of both the visitor and the inmate. In this case, a birth certificate is required to prove it.

Seasonal considerations

Keep in mind that this is an old, somewhat decrepit facility. Yes, there’s air conditioning and heat – at least in visiting areas – but the prison is known to become uncomfortably hot in the summer and frigid in the winter because it’s constructed mostly of concrete and steel. Whatever the weather is outside tends to get trapped inside, resulting in temperature extremes even indoors. Dress lightly if you visit during summer, and wear a sweater if it’s wintertime.

Remember, there’s only that one bridge on and off the island. It’s been known to become impassable in snowy conditions. Flooding of the facilities is common in any heavy rain- or snowstorm.

Then there’s the smell

The facilities on Rikers Island are built over a giant landfill. Initially, the island comprised only 87 acres, which simply wasn’t enough room. The problem was rectified by expanding it with more than 300 acres of ash and garbage. Garbage smells. It produces methane gas as it decomposes. Be prepared to hold your nose against the aroma that’s reportedly reminiscent of rotting eggs. It’s more pervasive on some days than others.

How Rikers Island Jail In New York City Actually Works

Rikers Island is home to some of the most notorious and violent jails in the world. It is located in the East River in New York City. The majority of its detainees have not yet been convicted of a crime and are either remanded in custody or held on bail. 

Vidal Guzman is a former member of the East Coast Bloods. He was incarcerated on Rikers Island when he was 16 and returned when he was 19.

Guzman discusses the conditions inside the New York City jail complex. He mentions corrupt guards, gang-controlled phones, and how illegal goods are smuggled in. He speaks about the history of the US jail system, how Rikers Island came to be, and the need for reform. He also addresses myths about Rikers being a prison and who is incarcerated there.

Guzman is a prominent voice in the Close Rikers campaign and the executive director of America on Trial. He is the founder of the End Qualified Immunity in NY and #FixThe13thNY campaigns. He left the criminal justice system at 24 and started working with the food-truck initiative Drive Change before becoming a criminal justice campaigner.

Check out his website or his Instagram, @iamvidalguzman.

More from How Crime Works

• Main content

The Future of Rikers

I think the throughline is the utter lack of vision. For as long as we have jails, what is the city's vision of what it is they should be?

New York City has committed to closing its notoriously violent Rikers Island jail facility by 2027, a seismic shift that would reorient the city's approach to incarceration.

Rikers' isolation has been likened to that of a penal colony.

The plan calls for the construction of four smaller modern jails to replace Rikers—jails that would be close to courthouses, not on an isolated island . It also envisions a jail population of only 3,300 people—a remarkable figure when you consider there were almost 12,000 New Yorkers in jail as recently as 2013.

But for almost two years now, the city's jail population has been growing, not shrinking. And activists see little reason to think the new facilities won't simply replicate the abuses of Rikers.

Also, Rikers is in profound crisis , again. There is widespread absenteeism among correction officers. And in 2021, deaths reached their highest level in eight years amid horrific reports of people denied medical care, access to lawyers and the court system, even access to bathrooms, food, and water.

In 2021, we published an updated roadmap for closing Rikers.

There has been a lot of coverage of that crisis, but less focus on what it all means for Rikers' future.

New York City has a new mayor—Eric Adams. He has committed to closing Rikers, but also made public safety the center of his campaign and is calling for changes to state laws that, if enacted, could see more people jailed before trial.

To talk about the future of jail in New York City, New Thinking convened a virtual roundtable: Brandon Holmes is an early advocate and organizer for close Rikers and the co-founder of Freedom Agenda; Liz Glazer was the director of the New York City Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice when the close Rikers plan took shape; Alice Fontier is a public defender and the managing director of Harlem's Neighborhood Defender Services; and Richard Aborn is a former Manhattan prosecutor and the president of the Citizen's Crime Commission of New York City. 

As Aborn tells New Thinking host Matt Watkins, “If we are to be a moral society, we cannot have Rikers Island continue its barbaric practices. The question is, how do we get there?”  

More New Thinking on Rikers

• The Crisis on Rikers Island (09.21)
• Jail-Attributable Deaths (09.19)
• New Jails to End All Jails? (03.19)
• Rikers: An American Jail (07.18)  

The following is an annotated transcript of the podcast:

Matt WATKINS : Welcome to New Thinking from the Center for Court Innovation. I'm Matt Watkins.

New York City has committed to closing its notoriously violent Rikers Island jail facility by 2027. That could dramatically reorient the city's approach to incarceration. The plan calls for the construction of four smaller modern jails to replace Rikers—jails that would be close to courthouses, not on an isolated island. It also envisions a jail population of only 3,300 people—remarkable when you consider there were almost 12,000 New Yorkers in jail as recently as 2013. But for almost two years now, the city's jail population has been growing, not shrinking. And activists see little reason to think the new facilities won't simply replicate the abuses of Rikers. Also, Rikers is in profound crisis, again. There is widespread absenteeism among correction officers. And in 2021, deaths reached their highest level in eight years amid horrific reports of people denied medical care, access to lawyers and the court system, even access to bathrooms, food, and water. There has been a lot of coverage of that crisis, but less focus on what it all means for Rikers' future. New York City has a new mayor—Eric Adams. He has committed to closing Rikers, but also made public safety the center of his campaign and is calling for changes to state laws that, if enacted, could see more people jailed before trial. To talk about the future of jail in New York City, I convened a sort of virtual roundtable. You're going to hear from four different guests. They are Brandon Holmes, an early advocate and organizer for close Rikers and the co-founder of Freedom Agenda; Liz Glazer, who was the director of the New York City Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice when the close Rikers plan took shape; Alice Fontier, a public defender and the managing director of Harlem's Neighborhood Defender Services; and Richard Aborn, a former Manhattan prosecutor and the president of the Citizen's Crime Commission. I started by asking everyone to give their take on the current crisis at Rikers: just how did things get so bad.

Brandon Holmes speaks first:

Brandon HOLMES : Imagine for over 100 years, a city that is now grown to about 9 million people, took anyone who had a mental health concern, anyone who was accused of a crime—not even proven guilty—anyone who had a drug or substance abuse problem, and put them on an isolated island and told them that they would await their day in court, but then did nothing to manage and sustain an equitable court system, or ensure that people were not abused, or attacked, or sexually assaulted. So, it gives the other 8,995,000 New Yorkers an opportunity to say, "It's out of sight, out of mind.” And it's led to a moment now where staff… When corrections officers say, "We're unhappy with our work conditions and the deal that we're getting from the city, we're not coming to work," that means somebody doesn't eat that day; that means somebody doesn't get to drink water that day, depending on the housing unit they're in; that means somebody misses a visit with their lawyer, which brings them further from getting released from that hellhole. And it means that people die. There are a lot of issues with Rikers, but ultimately New York City has decided that they don't want to invest in the people who are on Rikers—that includes staff, and that includes people who are incarcerated. Alice FONTIER : It's total failure of leadership. They had been playing with fire for many, many, many years, allowing things to be held together with quite literally in some places duct tape. It was always about to collapse and about to fall apart and all it needed was one thing out of the ordinary and COVID obviously is very out of the ordinary. So, it gave it a massive push, but it was always about to explode. Richard ABORN : I think there's been a profound lack of rigorous management. I think the union has taken advantage of some of the provisions in its contract and greatly reduced staffing levels.   One almost is tempted to say it's time for federal intervention. I know that the new mayor has appointed a new commissioner, and that commissioner should be given time to try and right things, but if it doesn't happen, I think we may have to ask the Feds to come in. This can't continue. This is barbaric.   The ultimate power of the state is to take people's liberty away and confine them. When the state does that, it has a solemn obligation to make sure that the people that they put into confinement are held in a safe and humane way. We are violating both of those rules every single day. Liz GLAZER : The city has not really focused on Rikers or on the jails for decades. And the lack of attention is both from the city itself, but also actually from every part of the justice system.  Because what happens at Rikers is also a function of all the other decision-makers whose conduct ends up meaning there are more or fewer people there, that they stay longer, that their cases are swiftly adjudicated.  The second thing is management. You think about the staffing structure. Rikers has the most richly staffed jail on the face of the planet.  And even with things like the sick-out that we're seeing now… It is just inconceivable why important functions like taking people to clinic, getting them to court, doing all the things that would make life bearable cannot happen.  And finally, I think the throughline is the utter lack of vision. For as long as we have jails, what is the city's vision of what it is they should be? 

WATKINS : Next up, the question of the city’s response to the current months-long crisis at Rikers. Richard Aborn: ABORN : It's been dismal. In law, we have something called res ipsa loquitur , the facts speak for themselves. You have to look no further than the front page of some of the papers to understand that conditions there continue to deteriorate from an already unacceptably low level. So, the city has really failed. I think there's no question about that. FONTIER : The mayor has not, the prior mayor, had not been willing to grapple with the union and to make hard decisions that would be unpopular with that union. I'm ever optimistic, but thus far Eric Adams has stated he wants to return to solitary confinement , which feels like the wrong direction and not the right. So there is a lot of issues and quite frankly, the district attorneys and the judges who are asking for bail and then setting it, have a significant part to play in how Rikers is operating as well, because they are the gatekeepers. We're not in normal times, so why are we continuing to pretend that we are, when the results are deadly? GLAZER : It is really up to the city to organize and mobilize all the different pieces. And there's no question that over the past eight years, a lot of money has been put into Rikers that has done everything from programming to training for staff, but the commissioners are really left by themselves. Maybe the trope for that is the fact that the mayor only went to Rikers one or two times.  I think what we saw as the number of people dying at Rikers shot up just beyond reason or imagination is really that the decision to send somebody to jail had become a matter of life and death. If you think that jails have any role at all in the justice system, that cannot be the standard. WATKINS : In the spring of 2020, Rikers emerged as an early epicenter of the pandemic in New York City. Along with nonprofits such as the Center for Court Innovation, the city mobilized on an emergency footing to release about 300 people held on shorter sentences into supportive supervision. Results were encouraging, with only a tiny fraction re-arrested on a violent charge. But there’s been no similar effort in response to the current crisis.

In fact, only 10 people were given early release last year, and some of them only had days left on their sentences.  I wanted to know whether people thought the earlier experience of the releases in 2020 suggested some larger lessons for what it would take to close Rikers. Brandon Holmes:

HOLMES : There's no doubt in my mind, I don't think there's any doubt in anybody's mind, that that is a perfect case study of what the city should be investing in and how quickly they should be making it happen. So at the peak of COVID in April, May 2020, the New York City jail population was the lowest it had been, I think it was since world War II. And that's almost doubled right now. It's not because we don't have those hotel placement programs anymore or because we don't have the resources or the investments, I think it really is like the appetite is just not there right now politically. And I think we're seeing that now with the new variant and we need this next administration to have the same energy that we had at the peak of COVID and to be able to sustain that. Not to just do it for one month because you want to get some good headlines, you want to reduce the risk of people catching COVID and reduce the spread throughout the boroughs. But actually doing it because you want to close Rikers and because you know that we need to decarcerate as fast as possible. Even if closing Rikers, the physical facilities, is five years off, we need to be doing as much as we can in real time to get people out. FONTIER : I wish I was more optimistic on this front because what we have learned from the fight to first reform the bail laws, and then the fight to try and keep them, which is ongoing, unfortunately: facts and public rhetoric don't match and you get a really long way by yelling public safety and bail is responsible and lock them up, even though if you actually examine the data that is not at all true.

Yet you can find a story here, a story there, and if you put it in three-inch font in the New York Post and scream about public safety, that's what people hear and what people believe.  GLAZER : I keep coming back to the pay attention rule. What happened in April of 2020 is that every decision-maker—the D.A.s themselves, the judges, defenders, police—all came together to look person-by-person who was in Rikers. And we saw a pretty rapid reduction in a very short period of time, who contrary to some of the controversy afterwards, were not the people who were driving the shootings. But one of the problems with the criminal justice system is that it operates and lurches from crisis to crisis. It shouldn't be that it requires a special effort to analyze who's in Rikers who could just as well be out—whether they're city sentenced people, whether they're folks in on $1,000 bail, whether they have certain physical or mental disabilities that make them better housed someplace else. That is something that should be part of the daily decision-making, both as people are coming in, and then as a regular review among all the decision-makers as to who is in the standing population. WATKINS : Closing Rikers is partly a numbers question: can the city get the jail population low enough for Rikers to be replaced? Right now, at about 5 and half thousand, the population is more than 2 thousand over where it needs to be. And given the new mayor Eric Adams’s focus on public safety, it’s not clear the needed reductions are going to happen. In fact, Richard Aborn doesn’t think they will, but that doesn’t dissuade him. 

ABORN : I don't think we should talk in terms of prospects. I think we need to talk in terms of certainty. If we are to be a moral society, we cannot have Rikers Island continue its barbaric practices. The question is how do we get there? All of the land use authorization roughly envisioned a population in the mid-3,000s. We're going to have to figure out how to handle the additional 2,500 that are now there, and maybe more. And the reason I say that is the NYPD is not going to be backing away from arrests. I think the arrest numbers for violent crime will continue to go up. And the courts are going to continue to set bail, where they have the authority to do so. So, we need essentially an overflow plan.  By the way, if the city is successful in returning crime to its 2018 levels—2018, not 2019, and that should be the goal of the city and all the D.A.s—then this issue goes away. I think we're forever condemned to these numbers while crime is so high, but I don't expect crime to stay this high. I know this is about Rikers, but it's really interesting to watch Eric Adams do this balancing act between understanding that we need to remain very highly focused on violent crime while addressing a lot of the racial injustice that's taken place in policing and in law enforcement, generally. And that's what a lot of the D.A.s and PDs are dealing with is: how do you get that balance right? And New York could really lead the way on that. WATKINS : Liz Glazer, along with former Correction Commissioner Michael Jacobson, recently argued if the city took rigorous advantage of every reduction measure at its disposal, it could drive the jail population as low as 2,200. She says justice dictates jail should be used as sparingly as possible. But a lower population would also have a pragmatic benefit for the plan. Much of the neighborhood opposition to the proposed new facilities has focused on their size. GLAZER : You want the buildings to be as small as possible to still provide programming and all the necessary services, but to also be a part of the neighborhood. And the bigger that they are, the more controversy and opposition there is from the neighborhood, and that's problematic. And I think that's part of what you're seeing in the hesitation of the current administration about how to go forward.   So what should that number be? So, the city's goal is to get it to 3,300. Michael and I suggested that there's actually a way to get it to 2,200. Again, the key is to pay attention. Just think how long people stay in Rikers… At the point at which you have 25 percent of the population staying for more than a year in a jail, which is supposed to be temporary housing for people not yet convicted, for the most part? That is stunning. And it's a reflection of the inefficiencies of the entire system, the inability to really work together, just getting people out the door into court. So, I actually think that the path that we lay out addresses many of the things that Adams is rightly concerned about. He is concerned with what neighborhoods are saying. He's concerned that officers, as well as incarcerated people, be treated with dignity and respect. And I think he has a kind of relationship with the union that may permit him to improve their lives significantly, even as the population goes down and therefore the number of officers may be reduced.    And the way in which we propose reducing the population, I think is very much in line with his thinking, which is let's make government actually work and be efficient. WATKINS : Brandon Holmes also sees overlap between Adams’s stated priorities and the plan to close Rikers. HOLMES : So it's like his goals: Close Rikers, fix government dysfunction, attack the major drivers of the incarcerated population. Those are all things that align with advocates’ vision for closing Rikers and getting to that point in 2027 where it is permanently closed, but I think the steps that he wants to take to get there are just not going to have the impact that he thinks they will. He can be the mayor who comes in and fails to close Rikers, or he can be the mayor who comes in and says, "There's a plan on the table. There's advocates who have been doing this for a decade before I became mayor, and I'm going to follow that, and I'll be the mayor who closes Rikers." FONTIER : With our new mayor, I think that campaigning is very different from governing. And he has said both: "I will close Rikers, that is an important thing, it's a priority,” and "We should rollback bail. More people in solitary." He can't have both. WATKINS :  A lot has changed since the city laid out its plan for closing Rikers five years ago. Along with Liz Glazer’s idea of smaller replacement facilities, are there other changes that could be made to the plan to help make closure more likely? Brandon Holmes:  HOLMES : We saw New York City was able to get down to about 3,800 people in custody at the peak of COVID before these facilities were constructed. So why can't we drive even lower? But there needs to be those investments in things such as the hotel placement programs that Exodus Transitional Community and others operate. There needs to be more investments in groups like BronxConnect doing violence interruption and youth intervention programs to keep people out of law enforcement contact. There needs to be investments in mental health housing—I'm talking long-term supportive and transitional housing that gets people out of Rikers but then also into stable living environments where they can continue to access the resources and the care that they need. And with all of that, we can reduce the scale of the planned borough-based facilities. That means we can accelerate the timeline to completion for that.  So, it's definitely possible. Incoming city council members, we've heard from a lot of them who want to support the plan and want to move forward in advancing and improving on the plan, and then we've also heard from a lot of council members who are saying, "I don't know if I support the construction of new jails." To which we say, “if you don't support that but you support closing Rikers, you've got to have a plan to get to zero incarcerated population by 2027. And if you're willing to fight for that, we're willing to fight for that.”  FONTIER : I don't pretend to say that the borough-based jail plan itself is not controversial, and controversial from all sides—whether you are a developer in the neighborhood, or if you are a prison abolitionist. But at the end of the day Rikers Island cannot be fixed. So, there are many, many things that can be done about the current plan, but leaving Rikers open is not one of them. ABORN : I think we are engaged—we, the City of New York—are engaged in one of the biggest experiments ever conducted around diversion of criminal defendants, and I think it's a healthy experiment. Prison really should be a last resort. Because we know that even short stints in prison are harmful to the individual who gets incarcerated. There's no such thing as a good trip to Rikers. It just does not exist.  So, we actually enhance public safety if we can safely keep people away from the island.  I think the piece that needs a lot more attention, that in the same way we are undergoing a reexamination of policing in the United States and in the City of New York, I think we need to undergo a reexamination of what it means to be a correctional officer, the kind of people we hire to be correctional officers, the tasks that we give them, and the training that we give them.  Ultimately, we really need to change the culture of what it is to be a CO in the same way we're changing the culture of what it is to be a cop. WATKINS : Richard Aborn is bringing up one of the most bedevilling challenges to the plan to replace Rikers. Opponents of the new jails say if the current Department of Correction is in charge of the facilities, you will inevitably see the creation of four “mini-Rikers.”

The most recent report from the federal monitor appointed to oversee Rikers in 2015 was withering on the topic of the department. The report noted “the department lacks the most rudimentary building blocks upon which progress could be built.” I wanted to hear from all four guests: what role, if any, should the department of correction have in the new facilities?

FONTIER : DOC as it exists now, I've lost hope. I've lost any faith that they are capable of reforming. One of the issues… So many complicated, political stances here because I believe in unions, I believe in the strength of organized labor. But the union contract, it creates its own set of problems. And the way that the union is operating… The way that it's operating, I'll just leave it at that, is not conducive to economic or efficient or safe management of the facilities. HOLMES : We are fully advocating for the abolition of the Department of Corrections. They've just been proving year after year that, as the incarcerated population decreases, incidents of violence from staff onto people who are incarcerated have increased exponentially. This agency and the union, COBA—who is actively telling people to not show up to work during a pandemic, who is exploiting unlimited sick time to get their people paid, many of whom have not reported to work in over 10 months and are still collecting full salaries—this is a huge problem.   So, we're calling for the abolition of DOC and we are fighting for the establishment of a pretrial services agency, an actual agency that has legal authority over the jails—more than what the BOC, the Board of Corrections, currently has. We think that this punitive model and this punitive agency is a major contributor to how the culture and violence on Rikers exacerbates itself year after year and that's something that we must change in these new facilities. GLAZER : We use a lot of euphemisms, and “changing culture” is a euphemism, and it makes it very gushy and hard to understand: what are people really talking about. And the reason for that is that we have not had a clearly articulated vision or goal for what our correction system should be.   So, in, for example, Scandinavian and Northern European countries, there is a very explicit understanding that jails are not warehouses. Jails are places where people are treated with dignity and respect and provided with the kind of supports and tools that they need, not just for a productive life while they have to be in jail, but also for a productive life when they leave jail, so they never come back. And if that's your vision, then everything follows it. Buildings by themselves are not going to change behavior, are not going to make people's lives better. They can assist in that, but the people have to do that. And that's why, starting right now, we need to take care of, both people who are incarcerated and officers, and very much change the way we do business.

ABORN : Then there is a big question of whether or not we need to—to use a sort of violent term here—blow up the Department of Corrections, and start it with a tabula rasa , start it with a clean slate, and redesign it. It is clearly malfunctioning. And that is a very serious challenge for the new mayor to get the Department of Corrections right. There's a time limit of every day because of the horrors that are taking place at Rikers. But my heavens, we really better make sure we have it right before we open these new facilities. Let's not kid ourselves by thinking that we can take somebody who's been arrested, put them in Rikers, literally treat them like an animal—in fact, we don't even treat animals that badly; you'd get arrested if you treated an animal that badly—so treat people that badly, and then expect them to come out and be supportive of government, supportive of law, supportive of policing. You can't have it both ways. WATKINS : The idea that more jail equals more safety is simple to grasp and deeply entrenched in how crime and punishment are understood in this country. But it’s also likely wrong.

First, jails themselves are some of the least safe places in America. Second, more and more research is showing jails are creating less not more public safety. Even a short jail stay leaves people in worse shape than when they went in, and more likely to come back into contact with the criminal legal system.   In New York City, we pay dearly for this result. It now costs more than a half million dollars per person, per year to detain someone on Rikers. To close out the conversation, I wanted to hear thoughts from each guest on how we take on this narrative of jails-equal-safety. Brandon Holmes:

HOLMES : When I was an organizer at the New York Civil Liberties Union, we did a police survey project. And one of the questions on that survey was: What makes you feel safe? And people would list all kinds of things: "I like going to the barber shop when I don't have anything else to do and hanging out,” “sometimes I'll walk around and listen to music,” “I'll go sit at the park and play basketball, or try to get in some pickup games," whatever the case may be. In zero responses did people say: "Police make me safe.” And I think if we ask the same question around what makes you feel safe, right? If we had everyone, all the listeners right now, close your eyes and listen to the silence. And now think of where do you feel the safest? Where in your entire lifetime, in your memories, if you think back to when you were a child, do you feel the safest? And I guarantee you, none of those involve any type of carceral facility, none of those involve any law enforcement unless it was your grandfather who was the sheriff of your local town.  None of it is associated with the ideas that the government perpetuates of things that will keep us safe or that the media will perpetuate that keep us safe.

So I think we need to ask people more in the public's scene: what makes you feel safe? Tell us. And then it is the government's responsibility to invest in those things. ABORN : The great thing about this is we just need to look at the facts. So let's roll back, and go back 10 years, go back to the beginning of the de Blasio administration, just to pick a point. In every single year up until mid-2019, we were arresting fewer people, putting fewer people at Rikers Island, releasing more people from state prisons than at any other time in probably the last 40 or 50 years, and the city was getting safer and safer and safer. The reality is more prisons and more prisoners does not equal more public safety. I'm a former D.A. I am not sitting here saying that no one should ever go to jail. I am not saying that. But not at the levels we've been doing, particularly now that we understand how destructive the prison experience is. GLAZER : As Americans, we've gotten used to thinking, if you want to be safe, call the cops and put people in jail.   And so, I think the thing that is most important is not to start first with the justice system when you ask, how do we create safety? But to start first with all the civic services and other things that we know actually make us safe and iteratively make us safer because if people go to school and have a job and have decent housing and all of that, the likelihood that they will ever first touch the justice system, or then touch it repeatedly afterwards, goes way down. FONTIER : Let's talk about the economics of this. Why are we spending the amount of money we are spending for something that doesn't work? So just reinvest part of it, decrease a significant amount, start somewhere. Think for one moment, if we dedicated half a million dollars to each of the people who we cycle through Rikers Island in one year, what you could do with those resources.

For significantly less money, we could give every single person who has gone through that island, stable housing, we could give them job training and support, education if it's needed, substance abuse treatment if it's needed, mental health support on a daily basis.

I mean, you could pay somebody to walk around with them all day for a tenth of the price. It is truly the biggest waste of money that you can possibly imagine. And it's just leading to people literally dying. We're spending half a million dollars and not even able to keep people alive. That's stunning. WATKINS : When you speak about needing some bold leadership, part of that bold leadership is going to have to be withstanding the campaign that would be led from the New York Post denouncing any of this, as they're already doing with any attempt of change. FONTIER : Day one of the campaign, you have to stand up and say: "I am doing this. And I know that there will be New York Post headlines every time there is anything that could even be colorably tied to my decision. I don't care." Then you have to just continue to not care.

WATKINS : That was Alice Fontier, a public defender and the managing director of Harlem's Neighborhood Defender Services. Also on today's episode: Richard Aborn, the president of the Citizen's Crime Commission of New York City; Brandon Holmes, a co-founder of Freedom Agenda, and Liz Glazer, the former director of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice and the co-editor of Vital City. For help with conceiving this episode, my thanks to gabriel sayegh of the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. Thanks as well to Tia Pooler and Courtney Bryan. And an umbrella thank you to Mike Rempel whose work and comradeship has done so much to influence the content of New Thinking. Today's episode was edited and produced by me. Samiha Meah is our director of design. Emma Dayton is our VP of outreach. Our theme music is by Michael Aharon at quivernyc.com , and our show's founder is Rob Wolf. This has been New Thinking from the Center for Court Innovation. I'm Matt Watkins. Thanks for listening.

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Reimagining Rikers Island: A Better Alternative to NYC’s Four-Borough Jail Plan

Six months before the Covid-19 epidemic spread across New York City in early March, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city council approved a plan to spend nearly $9 billion over the next half-decade to build four jails, one each in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. The completion of the new jails, in turn, would allow the city to close Rikers Island, home to most existing jail facilities.

The mayor and the council are right in one respect: the jail facilities on Rikers are deficient. One way or another, New York must invest billions to make good on its promise to treat detainees—most of whom have not yet been convicted of any crime—with compassion and dignity.

But there are major flaws in the city’s plan. The construction of four new jails in dense urban neighborhoods, at enormous expense and risk to the city’s fiscal health, does not guarantee inmates the better care that the city has promised. By concentrating on location rather than on deeper-seated problems, the city may simply replicate Rikers’ problems elsewhere. Indeed, should the city fail to successfully execute its borough-based jails plan, it would even fall short of its ultimate, symbolic goal: closing Rikers.

The coronavirus crisis puts these flaws into sharper relief. At present, the city faces the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions—if not tens of billions—in tax revenue, and significant uncertainty over when recovery will begin and how strong it will be. As a result, New York simply has far less room for error than it did last fall, when it approved its plan to build new jails.

There is a better alternative: rebuild Rikers. This 400-acre island is an optimal location for multiple, welldesigned, low- to mid-rise jail facilities. Rikers is also New York’s only remaining open space near enough to the courthouses in all five boroughs to be a practical location for housing inmates in a sprawling setting—but far away enough from the general population to serve as a secure location. Figure 1 is a sketch of what a rebuilt Rikers Island might look like.

New York could turn Rikers’ fabled isolation into an advantage, rather than a disadvantage. The island’s geography presents an opportunity to experiment with giving inmates more freedom and flexibility than they could hope to experience in four new high-rise borough jails.

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The Borough-Based Jails Plan: A Brief Overview

The ultimate goal of the new “borough-based jails plan,” according to the city, is “modern,” “humane” jails that are “smaller, safer, and fairer.”[ 1 ] Before Covid-19 spread, New York City’s jails, the majority of them on Rikers Island, were the home, at any given time, to nearly 6,000 daily inmates.[ 2 ] Most inmates are awaiting trial; that is, they are charged with, but not convicted of, a crime, and they cannot make bail or are not eligible for bail.

Rikers has long been a symbol of poor incarceration practices. Many of the island’s collection of nine low-rise jail facilities are outdated and poorly maintained. They lack basic provisions for personal hygiene and public health, forcing inmates to share toilets, for example. They also lack modern temperature controls, endangering the health and lives of inmates sensitive to heat or cold.[ 3 ] Such public-health deficiencies are even more urgent in the current pandemic, as corrections workers and inmates have tested positive for Covid-19. Indeed, the city has released nearly one thousand older and unhealthy inmates to protect their health.[ 4 ]

There are other problems. Cells and hallways are noisy and smelly.[ 5 ] Violence is prevalent: between 2008 and 2017, the city’s Department of Correction reported a doubling of inmate injuries, from 15,620 to 31,368, even as the inmate population declined 32%.[ 6 ] Deteriorating facilities and violence go together, as inmates are reported to have chipped off pieces of the decaying infrastructure to create weapons. Visitors have a difficult time coming to see inmates, as public transportation to the island is scarce. Once on the island, visitors must endure multiple security checks and additional bus rides from a central intake area to each jail facility, requiring more waiting.

To address the many long-standing deficiencies of Rikers Island, the mayor and the city council, in October 2019, approved a plan to build four new jails across New York City by 2026.[ 7 ] If all goes as planned, the city’s jail population would have fallen by more than half, making jails “smaller.” A better design would discourage violence, making jails “safer.” Jails would be located nearer to inmates’ homes, families, and friends, facilitating easier visits. Jails would also be closer to courts, helping to speed up the process between arraignment and trial outcome. The jails would offer outdoor space, natural sunlight, superior medical and mental-health care, and education, thus making the jails “fairer.”

The basic specifications for each jail[ 8 ] are as follows, although these deadlines are already subject to change as the city grapples with its coronavirus response.[ 9 ]

Financial Risks of the Jails Plan: At What Cost to the City’s Capital Budget?

Since mid-March, the state and city have mandated public-health closures of entire swaths of the city’s economy, including most retail, restaurant, and personal- services businesses. These closures will soon cause a steep falloff in tax revenues, likely far worse than what New York experienced after 9/11 or the 2007–08 financial crisis. Safeguarding the city’s capital budget for critical infrastructure that can support its fragile tax base has thus become paramount. Building four new jails, however, is the single biggest capital-construction project that the city government has embarked upon in more than a half-century—and the project is supposed to be finished on an aggressive schedule of six and a half years from mid-2020. The city estimates that the four borough jails will cost $8.7 billion in total.[ 10 ]

Even if the city builds the jails on time and on budget, $8.7 billion is a significant portion of the city’s 10-year capital budget—that is, the city’s schedule for long-term investments in infrastructure such as bridge repairs and restorations, bus and bike lanes, sanitation facilities, school buildings, and subsidized housing. Money that goes to the four-borough jail program is money that could have gone to other critical needs, including rebuilding the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway or repairing the New York City Housing Authority properties.

A comparison between the mayor’s January 2019 capital- budget proposal for the next decade,[ 11 ] which did not include funding for the four borough jails, and the mayor’s April 2019 proposal,[ 12 ] which did include such funding, illustrates this point. In January 2019, the projected capital (infrastructure) budget for the city’s justice system was $5.2 billion. By April, the justice system’s projected capital budget was $13.7 billion, driven by an increase in the corrections budget from $1.8 billion to $10 billion. The justice system now accounts for 12% of the overall $117 billion capital budget over the next 10 years, up from 5%.

For as long as the city’s economy continued to grow, committing $8.7 billion to borough jails did not cut the total amount of money that the city has to pay for other long-term needs. With the pandemic, the city must inevitably rethink its capital-budget priorities so that one experimental project does not overwhelm the rest of the scarcer money available for critical infrastructure.

Construction Risks: Can the City Build the Jails on Time and on Budget?

Overseeing the design and construction of four new complex high-rise buildings in dense urban neighborhoods simultaneously in little more than half a decade is an extraordinary undertaking, especially for a city government unaccustomed to overseeing projects of such scope. It is also the city’s largest complex infrastructure project in modern history.

The schedule is even more aggressive than originally intended. In April 2019, the city moved the timeline for the completion of the jails by one year, from 2027 to 2026, without explaining why the scope of the plan supported such compression.[ 13 ]

New York’s underground Third Water Tunnel is the closest rival to the jails plan. It costs $6 billion but spans five decades.[ 14 ] The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $11.1 billion East Side Access project will bring Long Island Rail Road trains below Grand Central Station. It is now a nearly two-decades-long undertaking.[ 15 ]

The jails plan is similar in scope to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s rebuilding of the World Trade Center—also a project involving complex highrise buildings with specific security needs. It took well more than a decade and cost $15 billion.[ 16 ] The East Side Access and World Trade Center projects, moreover, encountered significant cost and schedule overruns, despite their governing agencies’ greater experience in managing large-scale infrastructure projects.

New York City’s government regularly oversees contracts to rebuild roads and repair bridges, construct schools, and build sanitation and environmental-protection facilities. But it has little experience in overseeing the design and construction of four complex high-rise buildings in such a short time. As the city puts it, the project involves “complex construction on … severely constrained project site[s].”[ 17 ] Each jail must have a 100% reliable power source; three of the four facilities must include secure bridges or tunnels to adjacent or nearby court facilities in lower Manhattan, central Brooklyn, and central Queens.

New York City’s Department of Design and Construction, which will oversee the jails plan, has no experience in such a large-scale project and has performed poorly on smaller projects. The department, for instance, spent $41 million and a decade—well over the initial $30 million budget and 2017 deadline—to build a modest library in Queens’ Long Island City. Yet the facility has been sued for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, the federal handicapped-accessibility law.[ 18 ]

“Design-build,” the framework through which the city will award contracts to build the four jails, theoretically reduces the risk of cost overruns to city taxpayers by holding winning bidders responsible for design and construction, thus alleviating discrepancies between the two. Yet in its initial bid documents, the city notes to potential bidders that it will “mitigat[e] the risk to the design-builder by providing for appropriate allowances, potential economic price adjustment provisions, and mitigating unknown subsurface conditions.” Agreeing to shoulder the cost of “economic price adjustment[s]” leaves the taxpayer open to unknown cost overruns.

Three of the jails will require extensive work just to prepare the sites. In Manhattan, the winning bidder must first demolish two existing nine- and 11-storey towers comprising more than half a million square feet. The demolition, in turn, requires asbestos mitigation. The Brooklyn and Queens sites require similar demolition and remediation. In the Bronx, the city must first determine where to relocate the NYPD’s existing “tow pound”—where hundreds of impounded vehicles are kept—before a contractor can begin construction.

Legal uncertainty puts additional pressure on the city’s already aggressive bidding and construction schedule. Community groups in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens,[ 19 ] for example, have filed suits in state court against the proposed jails for each of their respective boroughs, claiming that the city did not follow the proper procedure for approval of a change in land use. Even short-term delays caused by these legal proceedings will put additional pressure on the city to do more work in a shorter time frame, thus pushing up costs as contractors add extra shifts and overtime.

Operational Risks: Would Borough-Based Jails Solve Rikers’ Problems?

Even if the city completes the four jails on a reasonable schedule and budget, it may not solve Rikers’ existing problems. Success depends, above all else, on the city achieving a highly challenging feat: ensuring that the inmate population does not exceed the facilities’ significantly reduced capacity. The city must reduce inmate populations below today’s record-low levels, or the jails will not function as designed. If the city cannot reduce the jail population, operating close to, at, or above capacity would imperil its ability to safeguard inmates’ health.

As of late 2019, the average daily population in the city’s jails was 7,365 inmates; by early 2020, the population had fallen to 5,721, the first time it had fallen below 6,000 in decades. (In addition to Rikers, the city has two smaller jails in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and a floating jail barge near the Bronx; all three would close as part of the four-borough jail plan, and the inmates would be transferred to the new facilities in Brooklyn and Manhattan.)[ 20 ] The four new jails will have a cumulative capacity of just 3,544 beds.

The city arrived at this number politically. The mayor’s office needed the city council member in each neighborhood to vote for a new jail and had to repeatedly reduce the number of beds to get each council member to sign on.[ 21 ] In 2017, however, when the city began to explore reducing its jail capacity, the report that it commissioned concluded “that it is possible to reduce the jail population to less than 5,000 people over the next decade.”[ 22 ]

But the city has never explained how it abruptly arrived at a maximum figure of 3,544 inmates rather than 5,000. To keep inmates below this new capacity, the city must reduce the current average daily number of inmates to its projected goal of 3,300 inmates[ 23 ] within seven years, a 42% decrease.

New York City’s jail population has declined from a high of nearly 22,000 inmates on an average day in 1991.[ 24 ] And over the past seven years, from 2012 to 2019, the jail population declined by 45%. New York today has a low rate of incarceration: 97 inmates per 100,000 adults, compared with 241 in Los Angeles and 450 in Philadelphia.[ 25 ]

Unless crime falls significantly from today’s near record-low levels, the city will have a difficult time achieving its far more aggressive goal without endangering public safety. Of the city’s mid-2019 average daily population in jail, 3,261 people were there awaiting trial for a violent felony, and another 901 were serving a short sentence. Even under pressure to allow nonviolent inmates to leave jail in order to reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus, New York could come up with only 1,500 of candidates, not thousands, leaving the population just below 4,000, or above the planned capacity of the new jails, and only by making dubious decisions such as releasing an inmate awaiting trial for allegedly murdering his girlfriend.[ 26 ] Reducing the population, then, even to today’s population of the most violent of the alleged offenders, and people already sentenced, would still leave the new jails above capacity.[ 27 ]

If the city cannot safely reduce the inmate population to match the capacity of its new jails, it will face two unpalatable options: running overcrowded jails or keeping obsolete facilities on Rikers open. Overcrowded jails would endanger the city’s stated goal of creating a more humane environment; it would, for example, endanger the city’s goal to reduce violence among inmates. In short, falling back on Rikers in 2026 would represent a failure to deliver on its multibillion-dollar promise. Yet the city has quietly left itself this option; the city council has not yet rezoned Rikers to prohibit jails there.[ 28 ]

There are other operational risks to the promises that the new high-rise jails will be safer and fairer. For instance, the government has never explained how it would evacuate hundreds of inmates onto crowded New York City streets in a fire or other emergency. As for the danger that inmates pose to one another (and to guards): though the city has projected operational savings from its potential reduction in inmates, having to secure each floor of a high-rise jail—rather than one large, open space across a horizontal corridor—likely will require more corrections officers per inmate, not fewer.

The city’s conception for new jails is that of small, apartment-style housing units (one inmate per unit, with a private bathroom and shower) surrounding a common area on each floor, a big contrast from today’s communal cells, where up to dozens of people can share a toilet.[ 29 ] Yet the city has never explained how guards might respond quickly to a disturbance on any one floor, or how guards might transport inmates by elevator from one floor to another without the risk that inmates might encounter fellow inmates from rival gangs. Even in modern jails, efforts at privacy and dignity may require more supervision, not less. A private bathroom and shower may be a noble goal, but a guard must be on hand to ensure that no inmate is spending a potentially dangerous amount of time by himself in such a private space.

In light of the problems revealed by the current pandemic, New York must also consider the heightened public-health implications of dispersed jails in dense neighborhoods. Corrections officers who interact with an institutional population that is, by definition, at greater risk of infection would be going to and from work in populous areas, possibly by public transit, rather than driving to and from a secured island.

The city also faces significant challenges in being able to offer ample recreational, outdoor, therapeutic, and medical spaces within high-rise configurations. The existing Rikers Island jails offer supervised inmate access to a modest outdoor farm. It will be hard to re-create such an opportunity on the roof of a high-rise building, especially with security and power needs competing for space on that roof.

The New Borough Jails: Transportation

Rikers Island has two transportation problems: moving inmates to and from court; and encouraging family members and friends to visit inmates. Four-borough jails do not automatically solve either of these problems.

One motive behind the four-borough jail plan is to locate jails nearer courts, ensuring easier travel time from Rikers to the rest of the criminal-justice system. The new Bronx jail, however, will be two miles from the Bronx Criminal Court. At the other three jails, there is no guarantee that any given inmate will find himself incarcerated near the court that is relevant to his case. The four jails divide inmate capacity equally, but the distribution of inmates jailed before trial is not equal by borough. A recent survey of inmates found that 32.1% of the average daily population had been arraigned in Manhattan, for example. Only 15.1% were arraigned in the Bronx ( Figure 2 ).

Dividing the inmate population equally by borough ignores another issue: crime and incarceration rates are not distributed equally by borough, nor do offenders necessarily commit a crime in their home borough. The Bronx, for example, has the highest incarceration rate, proportionate to population, among the five boroughs.[ 31 ] An inmate from the Bronx who had allegedly committed a crime in Brooklyn could find himself detained in Queens, making it difficult for family and friends to visit.

Another Way: A Reimagined Rikers

As the city notes, its new jails must be a successful example of an “enduring design that supports justice reform for many decades to come.”[ 32 ] In that spirit— and before committing irrevocably to spending billions of dollars in taxpayer money on a flawed plan—the city council and mayor should pause the current bid process and consider an alternative: rebuilding Rikers as a modern jail.

To be sure, the city should demolish Rikers’ existing jail buildings. But it can do so one by one, taking advantage of the fact that Rikers is at only 60% of its capacity. The city can rebuild a jail campus in place and transfer inmates from old to new facilities as each new facility opens, thus avoiding a high-pressure deadline.

By rebuilding Rikers, New York can avoid significant risks posed by the borough jails plan:

• the risk that the cost of four new jails will overwhelm the rest of the city’s capital-investment priorities after the coronavirus pandemic;
• the risk that the city cannot complete the project on time, on budget, and to stated specifications; and
• the risk that the jails will not have enough capacity for the inmate population.

Finally, New York can avoid the most significant risk of all: that shortfalls in achieving the goals of the borough jails would force the city to return to Rikers’ current outdated, deficient buildings to house an overflow of inmates. Indeed, as coronavirus hit Rikers, the city was forced to reopen a previously shuttered jail on the island to keep inmates spaced farther apart.[ 33 ]

Bill Bialosky, a New York City architect, suggests a rough prototype. Working in collaboration with the Lin Sing Association, a Chinese-American advocacy group in lower Manhattan (which opposes a nearby neighborhood jail), Bialosky has concluded that a revamped Rikers would be far superior to four high-rise jails because the “campus” model for jails, just as it is for schools, is far superior to the “tower” model ( Figure 3 ). He has drawn up a preliminary sketch (Figure 1) to illustrate the possibilities for Rikers as well. In fact, the jails and prisons that city officials visited as models for New York’s borough-based plans are campus-style jails, not high-rises.[ 34 ]

Examples of successful, modern, low- to mid-rise jails, by contrast, include the Van Cise–Simonet Detention Center in Denver (completed in 2010) and San Diego’s Las Colinas Women’s Detention and Reentry Facility (completed in 2014).

At Van Cise ( Figure 4 ), inmates stay in dormitory-style housing that features natural lighting and spontaneous recreation opportunities.[ 35 ] Inmates can walk to decentralized medical clinics as well as therapeutic and recreational activities.

At Las Colinas ( Figure 5 ), separate facilities house different functions, from sleeping to eating to recreation and education, with inmates getting outdoor exercise as guards escort them among facilities. The jail’s architects and designers paid attention to light and acoustics to create an environment to soothe, not agitate, detained individuals.[ 36 ]

Yet both these facilities are low-rise; the taller of the two, Van Cise, is five storeys.

For safety, new jails on Rikers would also offer better options than high-rise towers in dense urban neighborhoods, such as a need for evacuation to secure refuge points in the case of fire or other danger. Similarly, visitors to new jails would have ample room and time to go through well-staffed security entrances equipped with modern contraband-detection machines. As for fairness: new jails could offer far more natural outdoor space for recreation and therapy, including farming and animal husbandry, than can indoor high-rise spaces.

Finally, though the city’s goal to reduce its inmate population is noble, it could rebuild a new Rikers Island with extra capacity, ensuring that new jails are not overcrowded and not harming inmates’ quality of life and public-health outlook.

A Reimagined Rikers: Financial Benefits

Rebuilding Rikers Island could achieve significant cost savings compared with building four separate new jails. Material and labor costs will be the same. However, the city could save on the logistical costs of setting up four separate construction sites in four separate dense urban neighborhoods—which makes everything from pouring concrete to accepting delivery of rebar more difficult.[ 37 ] These overhead costs generally constitute 20% of a large project, or nearly $2 billion; saving 20% on this portion of the project, in turn, would yield savings of over $300 million. Moreover, in building on Rikers, the city would have more deadline flexibility. It could simply transfer inmates from an older facility to a newer one as each building opens, without having to scramble to meet the current drop-dead symbolic goal of closing Rikers.

In addition, eventually, the city could sell the Manhattan and Brooklyn jail sites to developers for midrise market-rate housing, earning a profit that it could invest in a rebuilt Rikers. The Queens and Bronx sites are good candidates for below-market, working-class and middle-class housing, though such projects would likely require subsidy. In fact, the city had once considered the Bronx site for such “affordable” housing.[ 38 ]

A Reimagined Rikers: What About the Drawbacks?

Rebuilding Rikers requires upgrading the inadequate transportation services for visitors. It also requires environmental remediation. Neither hurdle is insurmountable— and the city must address them, anyway, in whatever it decides to build at Rikers when it no longer uses the island for jails.

There are two ways to solve the current challenges faced by visitors to Rikers. First, to supplement the MTA bus, which provides service from Queens every 12 minutes,[ 39 ] the city can provide more frequent free shuttle service from Harlem and Brooklyn, increasing the service from its current 45–60-minute waits.[ 40 ] The existing bus service to Rikers costs the city $1.6 million annually; expanding this service would be a negligible expense, compared with building four borough jails.[ 41 ]

More ambitiously, the city could integrate Rikers Island into its five-borough fast-ferry system. As architect Bialosky points out, ferries to Rikers from Astoria in Queens and Soundview in the Bronx would provide far faster access than does current mass transportation. The city currently spends $60 million annually to subsidize its existing six-route ferry system; adding a limited route to Rikers likely would cost in the low tens of millions of dollars annually, including the cost of debt on the initial construction of a pier.[ 42 ]

Ferries could also provide the city with a better way to transport inmates to and from Manhattan Criminal Court ( Figure 6 ). A ferry from Rikers to lower Manhattan court facilities could “transport detainees to their court appearance[s],” says Bialosky, “without leaving the security of the bus.” He adds that it might save “52 minutes one way.” Similar ferry service to Rikers from Brooklyn, Queens, or the Bronx could cut inmate-commute trips, as well.

Further, as the city remakes its street space to provide priority access to MTA buses, it can integrate buses to and from Rikers in bus-only lanes along major thoroughfares across the boroughs.

The second major hurdle that the city faces in reimagining Rikers is environmental remediation. Rikers is built on landfill, which emits noxious methane gas.[ 43 ] The island also requires flood protection. The city has never comprehensively cataloged Rikers’ environmental challenges, or estimated the cost required to address them. Yet environmental remediation and flood protection are likely prerequisites for many other future uses of Rikers Island and, here again, the costs are likely less than those associated with borough-based jails.

New York’s four-borough jails plan would require significant taxpayer investment and government competence to execute on time and on budget. Yet executing this plan exactly as laid out may not even pay off, in terms of helping the city achieve its goals of smaller, safer, and fairer jails. There is no guarantee that smaller jails in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens, built in constricted highrise environments, can successfully provide ample outdoor space or ample therapeutic space. There is no guarantee that high-rise jails can provide visitors with a better, faster experience in overcoming transportation and security hurdles. Should the jails ever exceed their 3,300-inmate capacity on a sustained basis, overcrowding would make it even harder to achieve the goals of safety and fairness.

No one disputes that the existing Rikers facilities need razing. Before awarding multibillion-dollar designand- build contracts that put the city on a path of no return, though, the mayor and city council should halt this process. It is not too late. The city’s Department of Design and Construction does not anticipate awarding a contract for the first two jails, in Manhattan and the Bronx, until September and November 2021, respectively.[ 44 ] The city should use this time to invite architects and developers to propose their own visions of what a reimagined Rikers could look like.

Opening these new jails would, in turn, allow the city to achieve another stated aim: the closure of all existing, obsolete jails on Rikers Island. Rikers, for more than eight decades the site of most of the city’s incarceration facilities, is now shorthand for failure. “Obviously, we’re going to get off Rikers Island,” the mayor said last year, in response to the news that an inmate there had attempted to hang himself. “We get out of Rikers, and we get into the kind of facilities that are modern.”[ 45 ] But why not stay on Rikers, and accomplish the same goal, transforming Rikers from failure to success?

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How rikers island became the most notorious jail in america.

BRUTAL ORIGINS

It's seriously like going to hell. The minute you cross that bridge from Queens, you can feel the fire. — Former guard Robin Kay Miller

A guard at the entrance to Rikers Island, circa 1955. (Photo by Vecchio/Three Lions/Getty Images)

THE BAD OLD DAYS

"Atrocities would happen all the time, and nobody would say a thing." — former mental health employee Mary Buser

Former Rikers inmate Carole Eady with her son in 1999. Photo courtesy Carole Eady

BROKEN WINDOWS, CROWDED CELLS

Inmates drill in the courtyard of the 'Sprungs' area where 16- to 18-year-old detainees lived and attended school in 1991. (Photo by Nicole Bengiveno/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

'JAILS ARE SECURE'

I guess the more you try to escape, the more you see. — former inmate William Evans

CAN RIKERS BE FIXED?

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio visiting Rikers in December 2014. (Photo by Susan Watts - Pool/Getty Images)

Contraband snuck into Rikers by city investigators in 2014. Photo courtesy NYC Department of Investigation

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Allen Weisselberg Heads Back to Prison for Lying in Trump Trial

The longtime cfo takes another fall for the former president..

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Donald Trump, his former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, center, and his son Donald Trump Jr. Mother Jones illustration; Evan Vucci/AP

Allen Weisselberg , the longtime chief financial officer for former president Donald Trump’s company, was sent to jail for five months on Wednesday morning. Weisselberg was taken into custody after pleading guilty to perjury, admitting that he lied under oath during Trump’s civil fraud trial last fall. Weisselberg worked for Trump for more than 30 years, rising from a lowly accountant position to be the man who handled day-to-day financials for the former president’s real estate business and kept his financial records. 

This isn’t the first time Weisselberg has been imprisoned in relation to his longtime boss. Last spring, Weisselberg served four months at Rikers Island jail after he plead guilty in 2022 to orchestrating a tax evasion scheme at the Trump Organization. In that case, Weisselberg admitted to trying to reduce his own and other employees’ taxable incomes by shifting salary into fringe benefits—taking less money in pay, in exchange for free rent, luxury cars, and school tuition.

After he plead guilty, the Trump Organization kept him on the payroll, even as he subsequently testified against the company in a trial for its own involvement in the tax fraud. While the company was found guilty and fined $1.6 million, Weisselberg refused to directly implicate Donald Trump personally. 

After that Trump Organization’s tax fraud trial was over, Weisselberg signed a separation agreement with the company that included a $1 million payout, and barred him from discussing his work or cooperating with investigators—unless legally required to. Weisselberg had also been named as a defendant in the company’s tax fraud trial and was personally ordered to pay $1 million. Trump has appealed his own judgement for $460 million.

During Trump’s civil fraud trial, where he was accused of lying about how much his properties were worth to get better deals from insurance companies and banks, Weisselberg took the stand to talk about how Trump’s valuations—testimony that led to his newest prison stint. One figure under scrutiny was for Trump’s roughly 10,000 square-foot penthouse in Trump Tower, which Trump had long described as being three times larger than it actually was—and consequently far, far more valuable. Forbes magazine had exposed that as a lie, but at trial, Weisselberg testified that he had never been particularly involved with the discussion over the unit’s valuation. The implication was that the serious discrepancy was not actually an orchestrated attempt by those at the Trump Organization to deceive anyone.

However, reporters at  Forbes had recordings, emails, and notes showing that Weisselberg had actually been very involved with valuing the penthouse. In fact, Forbes reported mid-trial, Weisselberg had pestered the magazine’s reporters for years, trying to convince them of how valuable the penthouse was, falsely telling them that it was more than 30,000 square feet. Weisselberg had even tagged along with Trump as he gave Forbes reporters a tour, when Trump repeatedly said it was much larger than it really was, and worth more than it really was.

It’s not clear if Weisselberg will testify in the hush money trial that starts next week in Manhattan, focusing on  payments Trump made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, allegedly an effort to cover up their affair. Weisselberg played a key role in the financial machinations surrounding the scheme. With Trump denying the payments were to coverup an affair or in violation of any laws, Weisselberg’s participation would be unlikely to help him. 

The NY Judge Just Ordered Trump to Pay $355 Million and Stop Doing Business in the State

Allen Weisselberg Still Wants to Be Trump’s Fall Guy

Allen weisselberg, donald trump’s longtime cfo, pleads guilty to tax fraud.

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Six Defendants Charged For Corruption At Rikers Island

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; James Smith, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”); and Jocelyn E. Strauber,  the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation (“DOI”), announced today the unsealing of Complaints charging former Rikers Island correction officers CARLOS RIVERA, CHANTAL DE LOS SANTOS, and STEPHANIE DAVILA; former Rikers Island program counselor SHANEQUA WASHIGTON; former Rikers Island contractor KENNETH WEBSTER; and former Rikers Island inmate KRISTOPHER FRANCISCO with federal crimes arising from their involvement in corruption at Rikers Island.  RIVERA, DE LOS SANTOS, WASHINGTON, WEBSTER, and DAVILA were arrested earlier today.  RIVERA, DE LOS SANTOS, WASHINGTON, and DAVILA will be presented this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan federal court, and WEBSTER will be presented tomorrow in Manhattan federal court.  FRANCISCO is currently in state custody.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “Rikers Island is less safe, for inmates and officers alike, when corrections officers and others in positions of public trust accept bribes to smuggle contraband.  As alleged, the defendants in these cases engaged in corruption for their own enrichment.  In our relentless pursuit of justice, we leave no stone unturned, especially within the confines of jails and prisons, where the safety and dignity of all individuals must be safeguarded.  We will not tolerate any breach of trust or corruption that jeopardizes the well-being of inmates and staff.”

FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Smith said: “These defendants allegedly abused their former positions within the Department of Corrections by accepting bribes from multiple inmates - including one charged along with them - to smuggle contraband, including illicit substances, into several jail facilities on Rikers Island.  This alleged conspiracy permeated Rikers Island, polluting the integrity of the Department and its institutions, while jeopardizing the trust in other officials with similar job roles.  The FBI is committed to pursuing all forms of corruption, especially schemes involving those responsible for safeguarding our corrections system.”

DOI Commissioner Jocelyn E. Strauber said: “As charged, former City Correction officers and employees, and a former employee of a vendor to DOC, used their positions of trust to traffic drugs and cell phones into Rikers Island jail facilities.  Contraband in our City’s jails fuels disorder and violence, and DOI has issued recommendations to the Department of Correction intended to improve controls around officers’ and vendors’ entry and access to jail facilities, and to thereby limit the flow of contraband.  I thank the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their continued partnership and commitment to hold accountable those who undermine the stability and security of the City’s jails.”

According to the three Complaints unsealed today in Manhattan federal court: [1]

RIVERA was a correction officer who was assigned to the North Infirmary Command, one of the jail facilities on Rikers Island in the Bronx, New York.  From December 2021 through February 2022, RIVERA accepted bribes from an inmate and smuggled contraband, including oxycodone and marijuana, into the jail.

DE LOS SANTOS, a former correction officer who was assigned to the Anna M. Kross Center (“AMKC”), another jail facility on Rikers Island, accepted bribes from multiple inmates to smuggle contraband into the jail from March through June 2022.  WASHINGTON, a program counselor at the Department of Correction, also accepted bribes in exchange for smuggling contraband into AMKC, conspiring with DE LOS SANTOS from March through April 2022.  In addition, WEBSTER, an employee of a contractor that provided services at Rikers Island, also accepted bribes to smuggle contraband and conspired with DE LOS SANTOS from May through June 2022.

DAVILA, a former correction officer who was assigned to AMKC, and FRANCISCO, then an inmate at the facility, conspired to smuggle contraband into AMKC in exchange for bribes between approximately July and August 2021.  Specifically, DAVILA and FRANCISCO bribed another correction officer to induce the officer to smuggle contraband, including fentanyl, marijuana, and synthetic cannabinoids commonly known as “K2,” into AMKC.

*                *                *

RIVERA, 27, of Yonkers, New York, is charged with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, which carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison, and conspiracy to distribute narcotics and controlled substances, which carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison.  

DE LOS SANTOS, 30, of the Bronx, New York, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, which carries a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison, and two counts of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, each of which carry a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison.  

WASHINGTON, 39, of Brooklyn, New York, is charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, which carries a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison, and conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, which carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison.  

WEBSTER, 42, of the Bronx, New York, is charged with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, which carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison.  

DAVILA, 30, of Brooklyn, New York, and FRANCISCO, 29, of Ossining, New York, are each charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, which carries a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison; conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, which carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison; and conspiracy to distribute narcotics and controlled substances, which carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison.   

The maximum potential sentences in these cases are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendants will be determined by a judge.

Mr. Williams praised the outstanding investigative work of the FBI and DOI.

The cases are being handled by the Office’s Public Corruption Unit.  Assistant U.S. Attorneys Adam Z. Margulies, Jonathan E. Rebold, and Derek Wikstrom are in charge of the prosecutions.

The charges contained in the Complaints are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

[1] As the introductory phrase signifies, the Complaints and the descriptions of the Complaints set forth herein constitute only allegations, and every fact described should be treated as an allegation.

Nicholas Biase, Lauren Scarff, Shelby Wratchford (212) 637-2600

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Two nyc correction officers left bloodied, battered by inmates in one violent day on rikers island.

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Rikers Island inmates assaulted two correction officers in separate attacks Sunday, leaving the guards with gruesome injuries to their face and hands, The Post has learned.

In the first attack, which happened at about 1 p.m. inside the George R. Vierno Center, an officer was wounded when he tried to break up an apparent gang fight between about 10 inmates that spilled out of a cell and onto the tier, law enforcement sources told The Post.

The inmates ignored the officer’s demand to stop brawling — even after he shot them with pepper spray, sources said.

Instead, they grabbed food pans and garbage cans and began beating each other — and the officer got struck with a flying food pan lid that left him with a nasty gash on his left hand.

“I was trying to prevent multiple inmates from fighting each other,” the officer told The Post on Sunday. “A lot of other items were being thrown and one of them struck my hand and sliced it open.”

A response team busted in after several minutes, separated the inmates and led them away, sources said.

The 22-year-old officer — who has only been on the job for about nine months — said the cut earned him four stitches.

“I think I did my best, the best I could, in a situation like that,” he said, adding that he’s trying not to dwell on the attack. “I was just trying to do my job … I didn’t really take it to heart, because I feel like it can happen to anybody.”

In the second incident, which happened at about 6:15 p.m. in the Robert N. Davoren Complex, a female correction officer was punched in the face despite spraying her assailant with pepper spray, sources said.

“I gave him a direct order: Stop it!” the 45-year-old officer told The Post. “The verbal command didn’t work … and I sprayed straight into his face, but the spray wasn’t effective, and he punched me with his fist and knocked me out.”

“I lost consciousness for a couple seconds, then I was escorted away to the clinic,” she continued.

Other officers barged in, sprayed the alleged attacker, Tymirh Bey-Foster, and several other inmates with more OC spray, then restrained them, sources said.

Bey-Foster is an alleged gang member who is being held on murder charges stemming from a New Year’s Eve 2020 shooting that left a 26-year-old dead in Queens.

The seven-year veteran said she was left with several facial and sinus fractures, as well as a cut under her eye.

“It’s a horrible feeling,” the officer said. “My face is messed up for what? Because I did my job? I don’t wish this on any officers … we try to do our best.”

Her attack echoes a similar attack that happened in mid-March, where an inmate struck an officer who told him to go back to his cell, sources told The Post.

That attack knocked the officer down and left her with a cut on the lip.

The officer attacked Sunday said she believes that separating the most violent inmates from the rest of the housing units would help solve the rash of inmate attacks on correction officers, which union officials say has reached 150 since Dec. 20, 2023.

Since that day, there have been 59 slashings, 36 stabbings, 39 spitting incidents, 110 liquid splashings and five sexual assaults, officials said. There were also 108 serious injuries to inmates.

“Everyone deserves a safe working environment, and this is especially true for our officers, who have the toughest job in law enforcement,” a city Department of Correction spokesperson said in a statement.

“We do not tolerate attacks on officers in the jails, and condemn these deplorable assaults,” the statement continued. “We moved quickly to re-arrest the person in custody responsible in the RNDC incident, while the GRVC incident’s investigation is still pending.”

“We will continue to work to make the jails safer for our officers, staff and people in custody.”

Still, union officials believe the attacks will worsen once a city ban on the use of solitary confinement as punishment for the most violent offenders takes effect in June.

Mayor Eric Adams vetoed the controversial bill three months ago, saying it would make jails even more hazardous for inmates and staff alike.

But the City Council brushed off his concerns and overrode the veto.

The city banned outright solitary — which included 23-hour lockdowns — back in June 2019.

Instead, inmates had to be allowed out of their cells  for at least four hours every day , according to the NYC Board of Correction website.

Under the new law, guards will only be able to isolate inmates who pose an immediate risk of violence — for no longer than four hours.

Although they can isolate violent inmates for longer, the imprisoned must be let out of their cells for 14 hours a day and have access to the same programming as other inmates.

Rikers Island has a lengthy history of problems with its solitary confinement practices, which came under intense scrutiny after former inmate Kalief Browder, 22, hanged himself in 2015.

His death sparked a wave of reform efforts that led to the city’s decision to stop using solitary for juvenile inmates.

Despite this, union officials believe the city’s ban on 23-hour lockdowns has sparked an uptick in assaults on correction officers that will only worsen under the new restrictions.

“These inmates are emboldened to assault our officers with impunity because they know we are vastly outnumbered and there will be minimal consequences for their unprovoked assaults,” Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said in a statement.

“Not only should these assaultive inmates be charged with consecutive sentences, the City Council must repeal this reckless legislation immediately in order to protect the lives of everyone in our jails.”

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Former Rikers Employees Are Charged With Smuggling in Contraband

Federal prosecutors said the defendants accepted bribes and smuggled in drugs for detainees at the troubled New York City jail.

By Lola Fadulu

Five people who worked at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City, as well as a detainee there, have been charged with corruption, including smuggling contraband into the jail, according to three complaints unsealed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors said that in 2021 and 2022, several former city correction officers, a Department of Correction employee and an employee of a department contractor accepted bribes to smuggle in cellphones, oxycodone, marijuana, fentanyl and a synthetic drug known as K2.

Their actions made Rikers Island “less safe, for inmates and officers alike,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement, adding that the defendants “engaged in corruption for their own enrichment.”

“There is zero tolerance for anyone — staff or visitors — who attempts to bring contraband and narcotics into our jails,” Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, the commissioner for the Correction Department, said in a statement.

Five of the defendants were arrested on Tuesday; the sixth was already in state custody. Lawyers for the defendants could not immediately be identified.

During the period in which the officers and other employees are accused of smuggling drugs into the jail, visitation had stopped because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the number of overdoses in the city’s jail system had spiked.

In 2021, were 113 overdoses in city jails that required a 911 call — a 55 percent increase from the previous year, according to data from Correctional Health Services, the agency that provides health care to detainees. In 2022, five of the 19 people who died in the jails or soon after release had overdosed on drugs.

In one of the unsealed complaints, investigators said that from December 2021 through February 2022, Carlos Rivera, 27, of Yonkers, N.Y., a correction officer at the North Infirmary Command at the time, met in the Bronx with associates of an detainee to pick up contraband, including cellphones and drugs, to bring into the jail for that inmate.

During an interview with officials in June 2022, Mr. Rivera estimated that he had received around $500 in bribes via Cash App, a mobile payment service, according to the complaint.

Mr. Rivera was charged with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and conspiracy to distribute narcotics and controlled substances. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

In another complaint, investigators said that from March through at least April 2022, Chantal de los Santos, 30, a former correction officer, worked with two inmates to bribe Shanequa Washington, 39, a correction program counselor, to smuggle contraband into the jail.

Ms. de los Santos gave Ms. Washington paper sheets that federal authorities believe were soaked in controlled substances. Ms. Washington brought the sheets into the jail and gave them to an inmate with whom she was in a romantic relationship, investigators said. That inmate and another detainee then sold some of the sheets to other inmates.

Ms. Washington received at least $4,000 in payments from the sale of the sheets, the complaint said. After smuggling in sheets on another occasion, she received more than $6,500 on Cash App.

Ms. de los Santos also worked with inmates to bribe Kenneth Webster, 42, who worked for a contractor that provided services at Rikers Island, to smuggle in contraband, the complaint said. Ms. de los Santos gave Mr. Webster cigarettes, alcohol, cellphones, electronic tablets and paper sheets that appeared to be soaked in controlled substances. Mr. Webster brought the contraband to two inmates, who later sold it to others; in return, Ms. de los Santos paid him in cash, investigators said.

Ms. de los Santos was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. She was also charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud.

Ms. Washington and Mr. Webster were charged with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud; Ms. Washington was also charged with conspiracy to commit bribery.

In the third complaint, investigators said that roughly between July and August 2021, Stephanie Davila, 30, a former correction officer, conspired with Kristopher Francisco, 29, an inmate, to bribe another correction officer to smuggle in contraband. Ms. Davila and Mr. Francisco were in a romantic relationship and paid the other officer cash to smuggle in fentanyl, marijuana, K2, cigarettes and cellphones, the complaint said.

Ms. Davila and Mr. Francisco were both charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and conspiracy to distribute narcotics and controlled substances. The other correction officer is a cooperating witness.

After the complaints were unsealed, the New York City Department of Investigation issued eight recommendations, including that the Correction Department place canine units at the staff entrance at Rikers to screen correction officers for drugs and that it hire contractors or external law enforcement to serve as front gate staff.

The Correction Department will review the recommendations, according to a spokeswoman. She added that body scanners for staff and visitors were in place at three jails on Rikers and that additional ones would be added in the coming months.

The unsealing of the complaints comes amid efforts to close the troubled jail complex , which has been under scrutiny over high rates of violence and reports of unsafe conditions for detainees. New York City this week agreed to pay more than $28 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a man who suffered severe brain damage after he tried to hang himself in a Rikers Island jail cell as several correction officers stood by.

Jan Ransom contributed reporting.

Lola Fadulu reports on the New York City region for The Times. More about Lola Fadulu

NYC jail workers busted for smuggling illegal…

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Nyc jail workers busted for smuggling illegal drugs into rikers island, taking bribes: feds.

Three former correction officers, a contractor and a program counselor were charged in  Manhattan Federal Court for smuggling a drug store’s worth of illegal narcotics into two different Rikers Island jails, officials said Tuesday.

Former correction officers Carlos Rivera, Chantal De Los Santos and Stephanie Davila were charged with bringing in oxycodone, fentanyl, K-2 and marijuana in exchange for bribes between December 2021 and February 2022, federal prosecutors said.

Former program counselor Shanequa Washington and ex-contractor Kenneth Webster were accused of involvement in the conspiracy, as was former detainee Kristopher Francisco, currently in state prison.

“Rikers Island is less safe, for inmates and officers alike, when corrections officers and others in positions of public trust accept bribes to smuggle contraband ,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Tuesday.

FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Smith added, “This alleged conspiracy permeated Rikers Island, polluting the integrity of the department and its institutions.”

The suspects used coded communications such as describing a picture of marijuana as “nuggets” and an officer willing to bring in drugs as an “Uber,” prosecutors said. “Sturdy it up” meant package drugs for delivery.

The officers actually communicated with detainees electronically, the complaint states.

At one point, Rivera directed a detainee to cover up the misconduct. “Delete these,” he allegedly wrote. “See u Thursday.”

“Been did I don’t save nun when I send it,” the detainee replied, the complaint shows.

Cell phones and cigarettes were also smuggled. The conspirators arranged their deals using text and social media messages to arrange the exchange of drugs, and they often used phone apps to transfer money, the prosecutors allege.

In the wake of the arrests, the city Department of Investigation proposed moving lockers to a place before officers are screened for contraband and bringing open or unsealed containers into the jails.

The Correction Department said it would review the recommendations.

“There is zero tolerance for anyone – staff or visitors – who attempts to bring contraband and narcotics into our jails,” Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said in a statement. “This illegal behavior endangers the lives of people in custody and our staff. The department is working diligently to improve security and prevent contraband from entering its facilities.”

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Family of Rikers Island inmate who suffered severe brain damage says troubled jail complex must be closed

NEW YORK -- New York City has agreed to pay $28 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a Rikers Island inmate who suffered severe brain damage after he attempted to hang himself while correction officers did nothing for nearly eight minutes.

Madeline Feliciano showed pictures of her grandson both before and after a horrifying incident at Rikers, where the then-18-year-old attempted to take his life. Nicholas Feliciano was hanging for seven minutes, 51 seconds in plain view of correction officers before they came to his aid.

"My grandson will never be the same. He has cognitive impairment. He has mobility impairment. He has speech impairment. He won't be able to walk. He won't able to do the things like a normal human being," Madeline Feliciano said.

Surveillance video obtained by the New York Times captured the incident and the failure of more than a half a dozen correction officers to immediately rush to his aid. The video shows they did not intervene until he became limp.

"Rikers Island needs to be shut down. No human being should go through what my grandson is going through," Madeline Feliciano said.

She has fought for justice for her grandson since the 2019 incident. A spokesman for the city Law Department said, "The settlement of this tragic case was in the best interest of all parties. DOC is working to ensure the safety of all on Rikers, including those afflicted with serious mental illness."

It comes as Mayor Eric Adams' administration is fighting tooth and nail to prevent a federal judge from appointing a receiver to run the jail complex . And even though the Feliciano incident happened when Bill de Blasio was mayor, it has added new pressure to remove the city as the administrator .

"How could eight people walk by a human being who is trying to kill himself and do nothing?" Feliciano family attorney Jonathan Moore said.

"We all know that Rikers Island is a dumpster fire, is a stain on our city. We all know that it must close," City Councilman Lincoln Restler said.

The Bronx district attorney filed felony charges against three of the guards and a captain. Two guards pleaded guilty to misdemeanor misconduct. The cases against the other two are pending, but the lawyers want the DA to seek stiffer penalties.

Rikers is scheduled to close in August 2027 , but it likely won't for two reasons. First, the four community jails that are supposed to replace it won't be ready in time, and, second, they are only supposed to hold abut 4,000 inmates. There are currently more than 6,000 men and women at Rikers.

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What is the difference between these 2 Moscow metro tours on the same tour group page? One is less expensive than the other but both have positive reviews.

https://www.getyourguide.com/moscow-l181/moscow-2-hour-metro-tour-t92409/

https://www.getyourguide.com/moscow-l181/moscow-metro-tour-t19283/

We would like to go on this tour but could not decide which one to book. Thank you.

I see the only difference - one mentioned Spanish-speaking guide, the other not-presumably English...

I've seen one more - for 60+ euro!

Looks a bit unreal :)))

This topic has been closed to new posts due to inactivity.

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Moscow Metro Underground Small-Group Tour - With Reviews & Ratings

Moscow metro underground small-group tour.

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Tour Information

Key Details

• Mobile Voucher Accepted
• Free Cancellation
• Duration: 3 Hrs
• Language: English
• Departure Time : 10:00 AM
• Departure Details : Karl Marks Monument on Revolution Square, metro stop: Square of Revolution
• Return Details : Metro Smolenskaya
• If you cancel at least 4 day(s) in advance of the scheduled departure, there is no cancellation fee.
• If you cancel within 3 day(s) of the scheduled departure, there is a 100 percent cancellation fee.
• Tours booked using discount coupon codes will be non refundable.

Go beneath the streets on this tour of the spectacular, mind-bending Moscow Metro! Be awed by architecture and spot the Propaganda , then hear soviet stories from a local in the know. Finish it all up above ground, looking up to Stalins skyscrapers, and get the inside scoop on whats gone on behind those walls.

Know More about this tour

We begin our Moscow tour beneath the city, exploring the underground palace of the Moscow Metro. From the Square of Revolution station, famous for its huge statues of soviet people (an armed soldier, a farmer with a rooster, a warrior, and more), we’ll move onto some of the most significant stations, where impressive mosaics, columns, and chandeliers will boggle your eyes! Moreover, these stations reveal a big part of soviet reality — the walls depict plenty of Propaganda , with party leaders looking down from images on the walls. Your local guide will share personal stories of his/her family from USSR times, giving you insight into Russia’s complicated past and present. Then we’re coming back up to street level, where we’ll take a break and refuel with some Russian fast food: traditional pancakes, called bliny. And then, stomachs satiated, we are ready to move forward! We’ll take the eco-friendly electric trolleybus, with a route along the Moscow Garden Ring. Used mainly by Russian babushkas(grannies) during the day, the trolleybus hits peak hours in the mornings and evenings, when many locals use it going to and from their days. Our first stop will be the Aviator’s House, one of Stalin’s Seven Sisters, followed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — and you’ll hear the legends of what has gone on inside the walls. Throughout your Moscow tour, you’ll learn curious facts from soviet history while seeing how Russia exists now, 25 years after the USSR.

Local English-speaking guide

Pancake snack and drink

Additional food and drinks

Tickets for public transport

Souvenirs and items of a personal nature

Tips and gratuities for the guide

Additional Info

Confirmation will be received at time of booking

Dress standard: Please wear comfortable shoes for walking. For your Urban Adventure you will be in a small group of a maximum of 12 people

Traveler Reviews

This tour exceeded our expectations. Nikolai (Nick), our tour guide, was very knowledgeable, thorough, and has a great personality. He didn't take shortcuts and really covered everything that was on the agenda in great detail. We saw beautiful metro stations and learned the history behind them, including many of the murals and designs.

We did the tour with Anna her knowledge and understanding of the History surrounding the metro brought the tour alive. Well done Anna!

This tour was amazing!

Anna was a great tour guide. She gave us heaps of interesting information, was very friendly, and very kindly showed us how to get to our next tour.

Amazing beauty and history.

An excellent tour helped by an absolutely amazing guide. Anna gave a great insight into the history of the metro helped by additional material she had prepared.

great tour and guide - thanks again

great will do it again, Miriam ke was very good as a guide she has lived here all here life so knew every interesting detail.a good day

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Moscow Metro

The Moscow Metro Tour is included in most guided tours’ itineraries. Opened in 1935, under Stalin’s regime, the metro was not only meant to solve transport problems, but also was hailed as “a people’s palace”. Every station you will see during your Moscow metro tour looks like a palace room. There are bright paintings, mosaics, stained glass, bronze statues… Our Moscow metro tour includes the most impressive stations best architects and designers worked at - Ploshchad Revolutsii, Mayakovskaya, Komsomolskaya, Kievskaya, Novoslobodskaya and some others.

What is the kremlin in russia?

The guide will not only help you navigate the metro, but will also provide you with fascinating background tales for the images you see and a history of each station.

And there some stories to be told during the Moscow metro tour! The deepest station - Park Pobedy - is 84 metres under the ground with the world longest escalator of 140 meters. Parts of the so-called Metro-2, a secret strategic system of underground tunnels, was used for its construction.

During the Second World War the metro itself became a strategic asset: it was turned into the city's biggest bomb-shelter and one of the stations even became a library. 217 children were born here in 1941-1942! The metro is the most effective means of transport in the capital.

There are almost 200 stations 196 at the moment and trains run every 90 seconds! The guide of your Moscow metro tour can explain to you how to buy tickets and find your way if you plan to get around by yourself.