https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/nyregion/the-chaos-on-rikers-island.html

The situation in the notorious Rikers Island jail complex has spiraled out of control in recent months, and detainees have had free rein inside. They are in near-total control of entire units in some buildings.

My colleagues Jan Ransom, Jonah E. Bromwich and Rebecca Davis O’Brien conducted more than two dozen interviews and extensive reviews of court filings and city records. They write that the extent of the lawlessness at Rikers has become difficult to imagine.

Detainees, not correction officers, have ushered incarcerated people to and from their dorms. Detainees have wandered in and out of off-limits areas like break rooms and have flouted rules about smoking tobacco and synthetic marijuana. Sometimes they have answered phones that were supposed to be staffed by guards. Several detainees have pilfered keys and used them to free other incarcerated people, who went on to commit acts of violence.

The crisis began with the coronavirus pandemic. More than 2,200 employees of the Department of Correction have been infected with the virus, leading to acute staffing shortages. In recent months, Rikers has been plagued by staff shortages linked to absenteeism.

The 413-acre jail compound in the East River has been plagued by gangs, drugs and violence for decades and has suffered from mismanagement and neglect worsened by the pandemic and the severe staffing crisis. The unruliness has not been limited to incarcerated people. Correction officers have taken part in beatings. Last week, a guard was charged with providing a razor blade to a detainee who planned to use it as a weapon.

Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged 11 months after taking office in 2014 that he had underestimated the dysfunction that made it possible for violence to dominate at Rikers, and in 2017, he promised to shut down the complex. De Blasio visited Rikers last month for the first time in four years — on the same day that three Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said they wanted to hear from him about the “unacceptable conditions” there. Asked after his tour what had upset him the most, de Blasio said, “The whole thing upsets me.”

Things are unlikely to improve dramatically before the next mayor takes office in January, with the crisis presenting an immediate test for the new administration. A spokesman for Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee who is likely to become the city’s next mayor, did not respond directly to a request for comment about Rikers Island, but pointed to Adams’s previous statement in favor of directing additional resources to the jails.

For now, Rikers is clouded by a sense of futility. One jailer said he no longer confiscated weapons — even though stabbings have doubled compared with last year — because to do so, he would have to use force in an area where he was likely to be alone with dozens of detainees. He said he could not count on immediate backup if they attacked him.

An incident involving a bus on Rikers showed how lax conditions have become. A detainee hijacked it simply by walking to the front of the vehicle, which had been left unguarded with the keys in the ignition. A gate that should have kept him away from the driver’s seat had been left unsecured.

He put the bus in gear and rammed a jail building twice, the second time with so much force that the walls shook and bricks went flying.

“Rikers has long been dysfunctional, decrepit and dangerous,” said Zachary Katznelson, executive director of the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform. “What we see today is next level. It is an inability to deliver even the basic services — something we haven’t seen in a long time, if not ever.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4939877&forum_id=2#43254156)

i am sorry for the poor, innocent souls who will suffer because of lib policies.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4939877&forum_id=2#43254720)

this is just another example of society and our institutions crumbling, especially in blue states and cities, crumbling under neoliberal hegemony. you may care more when these things start affecting you directly.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4939877&forum_id=2#43254875)

Sure my heart breaks for the few "innocent" people who wound up in that hell hole but I don't think that's what this thread is about.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4939877&forum_id=2#43255023)

what do you think the inevitable result of this tolerance of crime and the failure of our institutions will be? it's easy to think "well, they're criminals: so what?" but does it not concern you that we're not able to adequately man and maintain them? what do you think that says about the police and other institutions?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4939877&forum_id=2#43255140)

none of those failsafes are actually operational.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4939877&forum_id=2#43258209)

Can you imagine consenting to some mentally-ill Leticia James type woman throwing you in prison because she arbitrarily created a brand new malum prohibitum offense whose strict enforcement appeals to her bitter voting base? Just because some bitch throws a law on the books doesn’t mean we are under some moral obligation to follow it, not does it mean the government is justified in treating those who break it horribly.

Oh, you broke ‘the Law’ so you now deserve to be housed with some mentally ill violent tweakers

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4939877&forum_id=2#43255293)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4939877&forum_id=2#43255874)

Bet those 2200 will still be forcibly vaxxed and/or be fatally murdered to death

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4939877&forum_id=2#43258208)