I made my way to the #CloseRikers workshop on the morning of March 5th, 2017 hosted by Beyond the Bars Conference. Despite joining the #Closerikers vigil in front of Mayor de Blasio's residence back in December 2016, I was also very interested in the next steps. Close Rikers Island and then what?
The facilitators were Janos Marton, Director of Policy & Campaigns and Erin George, Advocacy Coordinator at Just Leadership USA. Erin and I graduated from the School of Social Work together so it was great to see a familiar face and the staunch level of advocacy your peers are involved in!
They began the workshop by giving a brief history of jails in NYC. Prior to Rikers Island, the New York City detention center was Black Wells Island, currently named Roosevelt Island. Black Wells Island seems to have had an interesting history with multiple owners. I looked it up and turns out it was initially owned by a group of Canarsie Indians called the Minnahanock. Towards the end of the 17th century, it was owned by the Blackwell Brothers who sold it to the City of New York in the early 19th century. It was mainly used for physical and mental rehabilitation which included a penitentiary, lunatic asylums and hospitals. However due to disrepair and buildings being demolished, it was turned into a residential island in 1973.
During this time, the new detention center was already established elsewhere in the name of Rikers Island in 1932.
The facts of Rikers Island are uncontested:
The facilitators were Janos Marton, Director of Policy & Campaigns and Erin George, Advocacy Coordinator at Just Leadership USA. Erin and I graduated from the School of Social Work together so it was great to see a familiar face and the staunch level of advocacy your peers are involved in!
They began the workshop by giving a brief history of jails in NYC. Prior to Rikers Island, the New York City detention center was Black Wells Island, currently named Roosevelt Island. Black Wells Island seems to have had an interesting history with multiple owners. I looked it up and turns out it was initially owned by a group of Canarsie Indians called the Minnahanock. Towards the end of the 17th century, it was owned by the Blackwell Brothers who sold it to the City of New York in the early 19th century. It was mainly used for physical and mental rehabilitation which included a penitentiary, lunatic asylums and hospitals. However due to disrepair and buildings being demolished, it was turned into a residential island in 1973.
During this time, the new detention center was already established elsewhere in the name of Rikers Island in 1932.
The facts of Rikers Island are uncontested:
- It admits an average of 211 detainees a day. Which means that for a given year, an average of 77,000 New Yorkers cycled through Rikers.
- Violence towards detainees by DOC staff rose every year from 2004 to 2008.
- It costs tax payers of New York an average of $209,000 a year to detain a person at Rikers Island.
- There is a disproportation number of Blacks and Latinos detained: 89%. Given that they comprise of 53% of this city's residents, something doesn't add up.
- The majority of detainees (79%) are awaiting trial because they are too poor to afford bail. This certainly doesn't align with the justice system's concept of "innocent until proven guilty."
I have heard again and again horror stories of detainees, specially youth, awaiting trial for many years and experiencing absurd levels of brutality in the hands of Correction Officers. Stories like Kalief Browder come into my mind and it hurts and saddens me that Rikers Island is home to such savagery.
With that said, it should be noted that many court mandated programs rely on Rikers Island as a condition of a participant's release. When an individual is detained at Rikers, court mandated programs such as Alternative-To-Incarcerations (ATIs) advocate for individuals to be released to the community in place of serving time at Rikers and work with these programs who will monitor them and connect them to services appropriately; be it mental health, substance abuse, housing, income support, educational, vocational or employment. If these individuals become non compliant or ceases to engage with the program, after diligent search is conducted, the programs are required to report this to the Courts who will issue a warrant for their arrest. This process holds individuals accountable and works toward reducing recidivism by assisting with re-entry services. As unfortunate as it is, having a mandate over their heads help individuals in taking this release seriously and not considering it a "get-out-of-jail-free card." What happens when Rikers Island is shut down?
And so I posed this question to the facilitators. The slogan of the campaign is #Closerikers, Build Communities. It sounds self-explanatory and yet in need of more elaboration. They responded that they are working on:
- Speedy trial reform (so as to honor an individual's right under the Sixth Amendment)
- Bail reform (where participants are increasingly Released on their own Recognizance [ROR'd] in place of paying for bail or bond)
Unfortunately, this still didn't answer my question about what would happen to ATI programs. If you're thinking that we could bring in prisons as the jail alternative in response to an individuals non-compliance is still not the answer. Some of these participants are arrested for misdemeanors, which amounts their sentence to less than a year of jail time. Prisons are primarily for individuals serving felonies; with sentences longer than a year. In addition, prisons are for those convicted (post-plea). Similar to ATIs there are Alternative to Detention (ATD) programs that work towards getting participants ROR'd (pre-plea) into the community. So city jails unfortunately play a role in ATDs and ATIs.
The other major question posed by attendees at the workshop was what Mayor de Blasio's response has been to the #closerikers campaign. He reportedly stated that closing it down would be too expensive, too lengthy a process, and too complicated. However this is not to say that the Mayor supports incarceration over rehabilitation. Throughout his years he has chartered a number of ATD and ATI programs through the Department of Health & Mental Hygiene and the Department of Justice, namely the Supervised Release Program and the Court-based Intervention and Resource Teams.
I agree with the campaign in that Rikers is beyond reform and needs to be shut down. But I need more convincing in terms of the broader picture and consequences of closing it down. And I'm certain that the same thoughts are resonating in the minds of those closest to deciding the fate of this island, namely Mayor de Blasio.
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