Rikers Island comprises 10 jails (6 active, 4 vacant), with over 14,700 beds and housing the vast majority of the 5,720 people held by the NYC Department of Corrections (as of 9/27/21). Conditions in the complex are notoriously poor, and the urgency to close the facility is only increasing.
On September 10th, the chief medical officer on Rikers Island wrote a letter to the City Council detailing the rapidly declining situation: “In 2021 we have witnessed a collapse in basic jail operations, such that today I do not believe the City is capable of safely managing the custody of those it is charged with incarcerating in its jails.” Days later, prompted by the sharp uptick in violence, NYC elected officials visited Rikers, where they found people being held in showers without access to restrooms and witnessed a suicide attempt. Recently released former detainees have further detailed the current conditions on the island.
Reports of these atrocities are horrific, but some progress is being made. On Friday September 17th, Governor Hochul signed the Less is More Act. This bill was created to address a disturbingly common practice in New York State: automatically re-incarcerating people on parole for technical violations – such as missing curfew or failing to file a change of address form on time – most of the time without a hearing of any kind. Across the state, around 5,000 people each year have been put back in jail for these non-criminal offenses. During Covid, this unnecessary practice took on a new dimension of danger, throwing people into an unnecessarily high-risk scenario and contributing to the spread of the public health crisis in carceral facilities. The first person to die from Covid at Rikers Island was being held for a technical parole violation: missing an appointment with his parole offer. Michael Tyson was 53 years old.
The Less is More Act eliminates re-incarceration as a response for most technical parole violations. It bolsters due process by creating a system for violations to be responded to with a written notice to appear at a hearing within 30 days. The Center for Court Innovation estimates that by passing the Less is More Act, the jail population at Rikers will be reduced by 400-500 people each year.
Still, a full 92% of Rikers detainees are being held pre-trial, meaning they have been accused of a crime but have not yet had access to a fair trial. So to reduce the number of people on Rikers (and therefore make its eventual closure more politically achievable), the city needs more robust decarceration. This means reducing people’s contact with the police, police decreasing their arrest numbers, District Attorneys (DAs) not asking for bail, and judges not granting it. Instead, people should await trial in their own homes, where they’re better able to prepare and less willing to take a plea deal solely to leave the hellish conditions at Rikers.
There’s still much to be done, but we can put pressure right now on DAs and judges, who wield their power in NY courtrooms to send hundreds of people to Rikers every day. They can immediately reduce the Rikers population by changing their practices in court to abide by NYS’s bail laws, which require judges to choose “the least restrictive method that will ensure a person’s return to court” when deciding whether to detain someone pre-trial. And while we challenge DAs to change their behavior, we can also take action as a community to pool our resources and bail out our neighbors. Donations to COVID Bail Out NYC will go immediately towards helping get people off Rikers island by paying their bail.
In solidarity,
SURJ NYC