![]() Some days they’d only give you hard stale bread. The inmates come together to help each other - the inmates is the ones that’s feeding us and helping each other the COs don’t do nothing. People were asking, but they wouldn’t give them to us. You’ve got COs talking about how they own us and can do whatever they want to us. You could be sleeping, and they’d spray mace or come banging on the cells for no reason, just to wake you up. I was in a cell with about 30 other people. There were people in cells having seizures, and they just left them there. There’s people there that haven’t took showers in two weeks or longer. There’s no COs, they’re not feeding people, there’s no water, no showers, no phone calls. All names have been changed to protect their identities.Ĭameron, 21 years old, released September 9 We spoke to three New Yorkers who were released from Rikers Island this month about what they experienced in the jail. But as of mid-September, more than 5,000 people are still locked up on Rikers. Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Less Is More Act last week, which immediately released nearly 200 people being held on nonviolent technical parole violations and will trigger the transfer of 200 more people to a state facility in the coming weeks. The city reported an average of 2,304 absences per month this year, compared with 773 per month last year. Understaffing - largely the result of what is believed to be an organized sick-out - is also a serious problem. In a belated attempt to address the problem, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday announced the jail would add two additional intake clinics and open an additional housing unit to ease the overcrowding. People are only supposed to stay there for 24 hours before being transferred to cells or dorms, but many are currently being held in intake for weeks at a time in filthy, packed cells. Much of the chaos is linked to the crowded intake area of the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, one of eight jails on the island, where new admissions are processed. ![]() ![]() ![]() At least half of the deaths this year have been suicides. Even after multiple visits from elected officials and a flurry of Twitter threads, op-eds, and letters from Congress, the situation continued to deteriorate: An 11th person - Isa Abdul-Karim, 42, who was one day shy of qualifying for release - died on Sunday, and a 12th person died Wednesday at the nearby Vernon C. The ongoing violence and despair that defines Rikers Island reached a grim milestone last week when the tenth death of the year was reported. Photo-Illustration: by Curbed Photo Michael Kirby Smith/The New York Times/Redux/B) The New York Times ![]()
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