Nearly a year ago, the city’s Board of Correction voted to enact revised guidelines to address high rates of sexual abuse in the city’s correctional facilities. The final rule has encountered a chain a delays.
Is the uptick in knife violence on the streets a reflection of the increase in conflict inside the city’s jails?
Count Rev. Al Sharpton with Mayor de Blasio among the skeptics about the notion of closing Rikers Island.
Some want Rikers to close altogether. The mayor says that’s not a realistic goal. But a Manhattan Assemblyman says the de Blasio administration should at least move pre-trail detainees off the island.
What’s really behind the push to close Rikers—whether it’s moral clarity or fiscal concern—will determine whether mothballing the island actually makes New York a more humane place.
Anna M. Kross broke gender barriers and charted new territory in making city jails humane. But the Rikers facility named in her honor is at the center of the city’s failure to honor her legacy in treating the mentally ill.
Melissa Mark-Viverito is launching a commission to look at alternatives. The rationale for—and complexities in—shuttering the island of jails was the focus of a November City & State/City Limits series.
“Closing Rikers Island is a great idea – but we must have fully operational alternatives in place first, not just some half-baked notions that are destined to fail.”
City Limits contacted all 51 members of the City Council, the five borough presidents and the three citywide officials to ask whether they support closing Rikers.
The jury is still out on whether reforms – segregating the most violent inmates, a crackdown on smuggling, faster use-of-force investigations – will be effective.
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
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