Won’t Be Smilin’ on Rikers Island
The #CLOSErikers march makes its case
In February 2014, temperatures in New York City rarely broke 40. Nights regularly dipped into the 20s. On one of those nights, Jerome Murdough, a homeless veteran suffering from mental illness, ducked into the warmth of a Harlem housing project. Within days, his wish was gorily granted: he died in a 101-degree cell on Rikers Island. His bail was $2500, his charge misdemeanor trespassing. Sleeping in that stairwell.
For those unfamiliar, Rikers Island is quite literally a penal colony that sits just north of Queens. On a given day, it houses between nine and ten thousand people, around 85% of whom have not been convicted of anything. Admissions run close to 100,000 per year, though that number is dropping.
On Saturday, September 24, several hundred people gathered in Queens to march from 30th Avenue and Steinway in Astoria to the Rikers Island bridge demanding Rikers be shut down. The protest and ensuing rally were called by JustLeadershipUSA, an organization devoted to cutting the country’s prison population in half by 2030. The march was led by those who had suffered Rikers personally. Glenn Martin, JustLeadership’s founder, did time and was stabbed there. The rally’s speakers stood with the island’s entry gates looming behind them, on a stage built by a formerly incarcerated man.
The premiere arrestable offense, accounting for about 29,000 people across all NYC jails, is jumping a subway turnstile. Total cost? Three dollars. Rikers unquestionably takes in people who have done bad things, but what about that turnstile? Or an open warrant? Or parole violation? If you are sent to Rikers, violent crime or not, where exactly do you go? On this day, those who had gone told everyone.
“Officers purposely put us together trying to entice a fight. These officers have a smile on their face when someone gets slashed or beaten up.”
Those are the words of a 19-year-old man incarcerated at Rikers since February, read in a letter to the crowd. The place he has gone is named for a slaveowner, where more than 80% of those incarcerated are people of color. He is in a place where juveniles are placed into solitary confinement. He is in a place that permeates the souls and psyches of the city’s neighborhoods more than any other institution, but that is supposed to, somehow, remain a secret.
“Basically Rikers Island is the Abu Ghraib of New York City,” said Darren Mack. Mack was sent to Rikers at 17 and was there for almost two years. He was housed in “C-74, adolescents at war.” While there, he said he made the grueling trip from jail to court “once a week for about four months, and then after that once a month for the rest of the time.” That’s more than 30 times.
“Wake you up early in the morning,” he said. “Strip, frisk going; strip, frisk coming back. Yeah, it’s dehumanizing. It’s nothing but the evolution of the slave system.”
Mack echoed the oft-repeated motto of the day: “Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.” He brought up the mental health issues, the violence, the bail. “You got people sitting on Rikers Island because they’re poor,” he said. “They sit on Rikers Island for years like Kalief Browder.”
“There were times when I wanted to commit suicide, and I never got adequate mental health and medical attention. One time, DOC [Dept. of Corrections] took me off suicide watch even though I was trying to hurt myself. DOC staff ignored me when I told them I wanted help.”
Those are the words of a mentally ill man incarcerated at Rikers. He has gone to a place where 43% of people locked up have a diagnosed mental health issue. This makes New York City’s largest mental institution a jail. (Cook County Jail in Illinois holds more mentally ill people than anyplace in the country.)
Calls to close Rikers Island have intensified since the death of the man Darren Mack mentioned: Kalief Browder. Arrested at 16, he spent three years on Rikers Island, including a vicious beating from guards caught on security cameras and two years in solitary confinement, for allegedly stealing a backpack. The charge was later dropped. After his release, he struggled, eventually taking his own life.
There is also Bradley Ballard, a mentally ill man left without medication to die despite being under evaluation. There is Candie Hailey. She was at the rally. Hailey spent 29 months at Rikers, 27 of those in solitary, before she was acquitted of attempted murder. She told the crowd that during her time on the island, she attempted suicide 80 times.
“There are seven cameras in the dorm, and the officers watch us all the time. Even when they aren’t watching from the bubble, they’re watching the cameras. They watch us undress on the cameras, and they make comments about our bodies constantly. One officer said to me, ‘I know what you did last night.’ Because he watched the cameras. I’m scared to use the bathroom. I feel like I’m in a zoo.”
Those are the words of a woman incarcerated on Rikers Island. People use the word zoo a lot. They say they’ve gone to a zoo, a madhouse, a hellhole, a graveyard.
“Rikers Island has to be shut down, baby,” said Diane Roberson. “I was there for about a month.” Roberson said the cost of Rikers should be used to “build communities, better buildings, everything.” That cost, according to the city’s comptroller, is about $112,ooo per person per year for the city’s jails, and that’s likely higher at Rikers. That’s enough to house someone at average New York City rent for three years, or send them to a CUNY school full time for almost 18 years.
“I sit in my cell every night praying to God I make it out alive.”
Those are the words of a transgender woman, stuck in a male unit at Rikers. Despite Rikers now having a unit for transgender people, her request to go there was denied. She fears abuse and violence from other detainees and correctional officers. After all, she’s gone to a place where 98% of sexual assaults go unreported.
“The main thing that’s going on that people should know is that the people being detained are being victimized by the same people who are sworn to protect them,” said Johnny Perez, a member of JustLeadership and an energetic presence at the front of the march. Perez was in and out of Rikers as a youth for “selling nickelbags of inhumanity”, before doing a year there, including 60 days in solitary.
“There’s also the symbolism behind it, right?” Perez continued. “It’s been around so long that the symbolism sends a ripple effect throughout the country that mass incarceration, we’re putting a stop to this, jail by jail, legislation by legislation. So to close this, it’s not only effective to people in New York, but also it will send ripple effects across the nation.”
Under a bright blue sky and a steadily warming sun, the abolitionists marched with those who simply want more humane jails, and city councilmembers shared the stage with speakers who described the entire prison system as a “form of social control” that allows the powerful to discriminate. With as fast as the movement to close Rikers has grown, it’s no surprise that the political framework isn’t unanimous. What was crystal clear on this day was that, if the task is to be completed, it will be done just like the rally: on the strentgth of something built by the people who have been there.
Greylined is an ongoing, evolving space spotlighting the voices of those most affected by incarceration in New York City. You can follow it here. You can reach Allen on Twitter @LissomeLight. Portions of this piece appeared in an article at Socialist Worker.
