How goes New York’s endeavor to close “Torture Island,” the nickname for Rikers Island? Nearly two years ago, in exulting over his plan to build four new jails in every borough except Staten Island, Mayor Bill de Blasio boasted, “They said it couldn’t be done until it was done.” Well, it’s not done — and there’s no path to getting it done.
Last week, the federal monitor overseeing existing jails confirmed that Rikers really is Torture Island. The monitor, imposed six years ago after a suit by inmates, expressed “grave concern” about “pervasive high levels of disorder and chaos.” Four inmates have killed themselves since last December.
A single incident — one inmate severely burning another — provoked “multiple applications of force and multiple serious injuries to no less than four detainees and multiple officers,” the monitor said.
Separately, news reports indicated that inmates (and guards) are stuck in sweltering conditions, despite the death of a military veteran, Jerome Murdough, from heat exhaustion . . . seven years ago.
But the problem isn’t Rikers’ location. Nor is it money.
No, the acute problem is “decades of mismanagement.” The city allows corrections officers unlimited sick time, and a third of the 8,500 guards and other officers are either out sick or on restricted sick duty at any given time.
“Facility staffing is the most fundamental issue impacting the conditions in the jails,” the report says, but the city “has never conducted a comprehensive, system-wide staffing analysis to assess both where staff should be deployed . . . and how many staff are necessary.”
On duty, guards fail to maintain security, leaving “secure” doors open.
In response, de Blasio deflected. “First of all, we are going to close Rikers Island,” he said. “There may be folks out there who want us to go back in time. . . . What we need is a dynamic focused on how we redeem people.”
He repeated an old mantra, “the whole culture . . . needs a lot of change,” and that new jails in Manhattan, Queens, The Bronx and Brooklyn are the only answer.
Then, just after saying other people want to return to the past, he blamed . . . the past. “I remember in the months before I took office in 2014 reporting on horrendous problems that had to be addressed at Rikers,” he said, perhaps wistful for the time when, as elected public advocate, he had no accountability.
The mayor’s answer is that the people suffering at Rikers have to wait another seven years, the current deadline for the four new jails. By then, more than 130,000 people will have passed through the existing “bad culture,” facing danger and despair.
But they may have to wait more than seven years. The jails project is already two years behind schedule — and may lag further.
A year ago, the city had shortlisted three bidders to build the Manhattan jail but dissolved the whole process and started over this spring (one early bidder was a company subsidized by the Chinese government).
Reputable contractors are leery of bidding, because they’ll be slammed by the “no jails at all” movement. For the same reasons, bondholders may balk at financing the projects. The only “jail” construction underway is a 600-space public-parking lot in Queens.
City Hall hasn’t released a cheery “Rikers Progress Report,” once a four- to six-time-a-year occurrence, in nearly 18 months.
The nominal price of the jails is $8.3 billion, but every year of delay pushes that higher, especially when inflation is high. And there are problems: The new jails have a maximum capacity of just 3,544 beds. Right now, 5,943 people are sitting in city jails.
The current population of alleged violent felons alone, 3,930, is higher than the new jails’ expected full capacity.
Even when the murder rate was at record lows, the city never credibly explained how it would keep inmate levels below 4,000.
There’s no question that bad infrastructure contributes to Rikers’ woes — and that it harms morale among guards and inmates.
Eric Adams, the likely next mayor, in January should do what de Blasio should have done and pledge to build modern jails (as well as secure mental facilities) on Rikers, fast.
Faster, frequent bus service (and perhaps ferries) can solve visitor-transportation problems, the same way people get to the equally “isolated” airports.
Empty talk about “redeeming” inmates someday does them, and everyone else, a lot less good than actual work to start treating them like human beings.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.