"“When you get to the bottom,” he said, “the past, the outside, is gone.” This was particularly true on the rainy evening I arrived in March: mist obscured even the air-traffic-control towers at LaGuardia Airport, just to the east of the bridge, where flights take off and land within earshot of the island's ten jails."
Rikers Island is reached by a narrow bridge that blocks visibility of the outside, symbolizing how the past and outside world disappear once inside. The island currently holds about 6,700 people, mostly in pretrial detention or serving terms under a year, in facilities within New York City but largely out of reach. Although the population has fallen from earlier decades, the crisis has worsened as infrastructure deteriorates, contributing to violence, neglect, and deaths, with a federal judge ruling conditions unconstitutional. Despite the “human-rights crisis” framing, events such as a dinner with the Mayor at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center show attempts at engagement alongside reform efforts.
Read at The New Yorker
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