On a nippy Friday morning, a Q100 bus cautiously whirred its way on a narrow 4,200-feet bridge, unnamed and unmarked, mounted on the East river across Astoria, packed with women and children. Unlike any other journey, all its passengers are going to the same place and for the same reason – visiting inmates at Rikers Island, the largest penal colony in the world and once considered to be the most violent.
With all its dubious distinctions, Rikers Island is merely 11 miles from the raised torch of Lady Liberty and six from the Empire State Building but could have been light years away. It soaks in nearly $860 million a year from state revenues and yet most people who pay to run it, can’t even place it on a map. May be, they aren’t meant to. The 415-acre island that can house up to 17,000 inmates across its 10 jails, is just a white patch on Google Maps with zilch details.
Sitting across the aisle in the MTA bus, is an Afro-American girl with large golden loops for earrings and a tattoo on her neck that reads “billion dollar bitch.” She would only give me her first name Valerie and says this is her second visit to her father. Another black girl, on the seat right behind us with a blonde Mohawk mane on her head and an “R.I.P” tattoo on her neck, hastened to explain that most of the inmates were either awaiting trial or arranging the bail sum.
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A 35-minute ride later, the bus parks next to a sidewalk and the passengers –only Afro-Americans and Hispanics, no exceptions – hasten to queue up for the lockers at the prison entrance to stow away their cell phones, cigarette lighters and “anything sharp, anything inflammable” as Valerie explains. Nearly 90% of the visitors are women.
In one corner, two women are loudly protesting bringing along infants and babies for prison visits. “A child should stay as far away from Rikers as possible. It is bad enough that I have to be here…but definitely not them,” grumbled one while the other nodded in agreement as a bunch of tiny tots played on the gravel.
It was going to be a busy day. Friday, in Rikers lingo, is “everyone’s day” – implying every inmate is allowed visits. On all other days in a month, visits are rationed. Inmates with A-L family names can be visited on December 1, 4, 9 and 12 and so on while M-Z names can have visitors on December 2, 5, 8 and so forth, according to a copy of the jail calendar.
Bought in 1884 for $180,000 by New York City, the original island of 87.5 acres, was expanded by landfill to its current size between the late 19th century to the mid-20th. Besides its 10 facilities – two of these are floating jails or old-time Staten Island ferries that are docked off the northern tip of the island -- the so-called ‘Gotham city’ has numerous support operations such as a central laundry, central bakery, K-9 and Marine units.
The island lock-up, which has morphed into a city on the inside, has also fostered a full economy on the outside. In unintended ways, an economy has sprung up to leech onto the benefits of a captive market of 10,000 correction officers at any given time, about 1500 visitors a day and an inmate population that hovers around 15,000.
Society’s dump
“This is a dumping ground for society’s waste. You clean up New York and turn your face away from this. Most people just refuse to be in any skin other their own,” said Keisha, a 26 year old city-based social worker who has been working with “at-risk children” for six years and was on one of her dozen trips so far to Rikers.
Choosing to be identified by only her first name, she was guarding her colleague’s wallet and cell phone as the latter was inside to counsel a 16-year old girl arrested for felony. “The locker situation here is ridiculous. Isn’t it ironical that the biggest jail should have such easy-to-break-in lockers?” she says, shouting to be heard above the roar of a plane taking off from the LaGuardia airport, which seems just a giant hop away from the island.
According to the New York City Department of Correction, the average daily inmate population in the city fluctuates between 13,000 and 18,000 across its facilities – a figure that exceeds the prison population of many state correctional systems.
Department’s spokesman Stephen Morello refused to accommodate the request to visit the facility as they “simply receive too many journalism student requests to be able to accommodate them.”
Jennifer R Wynn, author of “Inside Rikers” and Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at LaGuardia Community College, wrote in her book: “Rikers performs an expert magic trick: it disappears people, keeping in those who want to get out and keeping out those who want to get in.” Wynn, who has visited the place for seven years, says that the 10,000 correction officers who make a living off it, were “doing time” in there too.
The memories of Cormac McEnery, a City Island-based lawyer for elder care and estate planning, of Rikers are in stark contrast: his grandfather was the jail warden in 1950s and he has spent his Christmas vacations there, for several years. “I remember running around the grounds with my dog. I used to play on a wooden bench there with my toy trucks and go for Christmas mass in the chapel there,” says McEnery. Other times, he would be learning how to pick locks with some of the inmates just to amuse himself.
He says he wouldn’t be running around on the island today. “It is a different time, different mentality. It is a substantially more violent population,” he said “When you have more people bumping up against each other, there is bound to be more violence.” Many new facilities have been added at Rikers over the years to accommodate a growing influx of inmates and it now has separate prisons for adult males, females, adolescents, AIDS-infected and those requiring psychiatric observation.
With a school, medical clinic, ball fields which holds in-house tournaments, chapels, a gym and a barber shop – they only provide hair cuts and no styling or dyeing -- a power plant, a tailor shop and a bakery inside it, the prison island is virtually a city of its own.
“You need greater compassion, a greater desire to help and a completely non-judgemental outlook when you step into Rikers,” says 77-year old Sister Marian who was the Catholic chaplain for female inmates for 23 years and retired two years back. She campaigned for nearly 17 years to reform the Rockefeller drug laws that imposed stringent imprisonment sentences for selling as little as two ounces of narcotics. “The law was brutal. These women would just languish there for years,” she said.
“Most of them are poor and abused and eager to connect to God. There was no crisis of faith,” she added. Above the prison chapel door hangs sign that simply says 'All Paths to God' and allows inmates to connect with their specific faith. Every facility has four chaplains – one from Protestant church, a Jewish Rabbi, a Muslim clergyman and a Catholic priest. Occasionally, a Buddhist monk or a Hindu priest would be called in if an inmate asked for it.
‘Perverse economy’
Even as Rikers breeds a city within, it has a prison-centric economy on the outside. Keisha said a “perverse economy” was “quietly gaining root around the whole business of incarcerating people” and pointed to a beeline of blue and white mini-vans parked along the sidewalks.
J&J Van Service Inc. is one such private shuttle operator to Rikers which ferries relatives of the inmates from Bronx five days a week for a round trip of $15. It has been in business for 22 years. “3 Travel’s in the same week, the third fare is $9,” advertises its pamphlet. “The higher the crime rate, the better my business does,” said Dennis Cruz, driver of one of the shuttles, “After all, somebody is always getting arrested from spitting in the wrong place to committing homicides.”
Cruz makes 10-12 trips in a day – sometimes more, especially on Fridays -- packing in 5-6 people per trip. “From where I see it, it is a good business to be in. No recession, no lay offs,” he grinned.
There are many others looking at more sophisticated ways to profit from it. Commissioner Schriro’s office panes at the entrance are plastered with fliers from The Fortune Society that is trying to “build people, not prison” and offers courses in Asbestos handling, food safety certification and commercial driver license along with interview and job placement assistance.
Right at the foot of the bridge that leads to Rikers, at the cross of Hazen Street and 19th Avenue, is Ben Hacem Halal food cart that is deftly dishing out meat wraps. “I was told this is the safest place to do business and there is no competition. But the cars just whiz by. I will give it a shot for few more weeks, then decide,” said the truck’s owner Sanchez Drez who moved into this location just 3 days back.
Across the road stands a police depot that sells belts, dresses, knives, pistol cleaning kits and other things that are bought by the correction officers. A pepper spray sale is on with two bottles going for $20. While most items require a valid cop id., there is other stuff for civilians such as teddy bears in NYPD uniforms, baby shoes and bibs with “I love NYDC” logos and t-shirts stamped with “Rikers Island Survivor” motifs.
The block-long line of businesses here includes a cheque cashing facility, a Western Union outlet, an office of Prison Health Services that provides inmate healthcare services and a bevy of warehouses such as a pharmacy and a food catering business that contracts with airlines plying from LaGuardia.
“The rentals are great. The place is safe with so many officers around all the time. These officers are also my biggest customers. They cash their cheques and come right in here,” said Mitchell Williams, a shop owner who sells a variety of fragrances, organic soaps, lamps and clothes in a shop next to cheque cashing counter.
Not all businesses take off though. Williams lucked in when a jewellery store in the same space closed down six months back. Above his shop is an old rusted board of another business that shuttered, called
‘Bad Apple Bail Bonds’ with a tagline “Tired of coming to Rikers? We will get your loved ones out.” If they had money for bail, they wouldn’t be in Rikers, right?
But the place has character. And it will remind you once in a while, in the midst of teeming commerce, of what it essentially is – a place for incarcerates, those reviled and feared by the society.
Even as I turn to leave the shop, a cop enters the shop to buy a special concoction perfume called ‘Desire’ and gets chatty with Williams. I can hear the officer telling the shop owner that a cop at Rikers had his thumb bitten off earlier that day.
“Not just bitten into, it’s bitten off! The thumb of the right hand, the shooting hand! Imagine….and this is the thing that makes us human,” he exclaimed before paying $50 for his bottle of perfume and rushing out. He dashes off in his car across the bridge. He had to report in the same facility where the thumb-biting had happened in another 20 minutes.
That is business at Rikers and there is nothing usual about it.
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