Opinion: Why New York needs to close Rikers once and for all

RIkers Island. AP FILE photo by Ted Shaffrey

By Stephanie Frias

With the mayoral elections coming up in New York City, it's important we begin to re-examine how we think of safety and justice. With a place as filled with life as New York, it is an unfortunate fact that we have the most notorious jail system in the United States, and the country’s last penal colony. Made up of ten jails sprawling across 400 acres of land in the East River, Rikers Island has deplorable conditions ranging from abusive detainee treatment, to overcrowding and run-down infrastructure. Unfortunately, my family joined the thousands of New Yorkers who experienced this injustice first-hand, when my brother was detained there for 7 months while awaiting trial.

When my brother was incarcerated at Rikers in 2021, my family and I experienced both fear and confusion. After traveling hours just to reach the island, we were met with correctional officers who were antagonistic towards my family members, often making condescending comments. Correctional officers would turn families way over trivial matters like the type of clothes they were wearing, and say it was just “protocol.” These types of tactics are purposeful in order to isolate people and make their families feel powerless. People held at Rikers and their families are not seen as people but instead nuisances. When the city takes people into its custody and banishes them to an isolated island, it sends a dangerous message that no rebuilding or retraining will ever overcome. Harsh, unrelenting punishment is the norm, and guards act accordingly. Rikers cannot be reformed; it must be closed.

My brother's incarceration is heartbreaking and has caused a ripple effect on my family. Having to grieve someone you love but you know is still alive is an incredibly hard experience that thousands of families and individuals that are incarcerated in Rikers face today. Even when my brother was moved to a facility upstate after sentencing, he has had to endure both physical and mental issues that my family has had to help with emotionally. My family's situation is not unique. As someone from a mostly Black and Latino low-income neighborhood I know that there are hundreds of families and incarcerated individuals who face a similar situation.

Many people detained in Rikers, a vast majority of whom are Black and Latino folks, are held on a pretrial basis. Some people stay in Rikers for years awaiting sentencing, rarely getting the help they need, as they end up being trapped in a cycle of conflict and criminalization. Instead of offering more mental health and social services for low-income communities, Mayor Adams has worked to keep these communities behind bars.

The presence of Rikers in New York City has promoted a culture of punishment and dehumanization. “Tough on crime” legislation has done very little to get to the root of the issue of crime, and instead punishes the mentally ill, the poor, and the vulnerable. People who have been detained at Rikers have described it as a torture chamber, in which inmates face physical, verbal, and sexual abuse.

Rikers is also a huge environmental hazard, built on landfill and polluting the air and water for all those around it. The decomposing garbage the jails are built on produces poisonous methane gas, which can cause severe breathing issues. People detained at Rikers have described a continuous stench from the facilities. It has also been nicknamed “The Oven” due to the obscenely high temperatures in cells. In 2011 Rikers employees sued the city, as each of these employees had been diagnosed with cancer, and alleged that the prolonged exposure to the toxic island caused it. Although the City denied these claims, it is impossible to ignore the landfill waste surrounding Rikers and how it affects neighboring boroughs such as Queens and the Bronx.

With the mayoral elections coming up, it's important that we seek out representatives who will do right by their constituents and abolish Rikers once and for all. Anyone who has an incarcerated loved one at Rikers knows the fear, anger, and confusion that runs through your head every day, knowing they are in a space where their autonomy and rights are trampled on. New Yorkers deserve better than this from our next mayor, especially as Rikers is legally required to close by 2027. We deserve an elected official who will protect their constituents by getting rid of a system that works to isolate them from society and destroy their basic human rights. Social services, anti-poverty initiatives, and more humane treatment of our prison population are the answer to less crime—not Rikers.

Stephanie Frias is an intern with Urban Youth Alliance, one of the organizations leading the Campaign to Close Rikers. She is a resident of Queens.