Report From a ‘War Zone’: The Tragedy of Rikers Island

Rikers Island is a war zone.

Every day, people are fighting for their lives. Years of reports, hearings, and press conferences have documented the abusive conditions at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City.

Little has changed.

Frontline staff and incarcerated people are exposed to extreme trauma.  They survive day-to-day in a constant state of terror. Meanwhile, social determinants of chaos, corruption, and deception sustain a toxic culture.

Nel Andrews

The jail infrastructure is in a state of decay: filthy and crumbling.

The Rikers system is saturated with layers of oversight bodies, lawsuits, hearings, and committees that seek to hold the system accountable, but continue to fall short.

These conditions are the result of decades of state-sanctioned racist policies and practices built on a toxic history of colonization and enslavement in New York City [NYC], while coordinated sabotage efforts continually threaten and prevent attempts at progress.

So, in June 2021 when Vincent Schiraldi became Commissioner at the New York City Department of Correction [DOC], the stakes were high.

With an outgoing Mayor, Schiraldi had only seven months to make headway on stabilizing the culture in preparation for closing Rikers and transitioning into the smaller borough-based facilities.

He began with a focus on young adults,  given that the  rates of violence and victimization are highest among this age group. This strategy necessitated an authentic overhaul of the status quo and fused both inside and outside expertise.

In December 2021, Commissioner Schiraldi and his administration were ousted by incoming Mayor Eric Adams, who was elected on a platform to ‘take back our city’ in the name of ‘law and order’.

Alex Frank

Media reports and politicians have since politicized the false narrative that youth crime and rates of violence are on the rise, and that now threatens key legislation that took years to enact and has made an important impact on driving down incarceration rates and improving public safety despite the rhetoric.

The “tough on crime”, “law and order” movements are growing because they are well-organized, well-funded, and politically powerful.

As families, corrections staff, impacted people, advocates and concerned citizens, it’s time we grapple with another layer of truth.

For years, progressive liberals and conservatives alike have attached themselves to the idea that justice reform is a “bipartisan issue,” while whitewashing the seriousness of its racist undercurrent and historical context.

Juan Gomez

Calls for “reform” strengthened the “us versus them” paradigm that defines the legal system by deepening a “deserving versus undeserving” narrative and failing to engage in meaningful conversations about the root causes of corruption and violence.

Meanwhile, the “deep state” has prepared a bigger, faster, and stronger “tough on crime” pendulum swing.

And we as a movement are not prepared to combat it.

Working on the ‘inside’, we saw first-hand how these combined forces were coming together to create a “make Rikers great again” narrative. And on cue, progressives doubled down on recycled strategies, whose wins lacked sustainability, while solutions in the form of more “programs” and calls for hearings that to date, have done little to hold the system accountable.

Programs and accountability are critical, but “the how” matters just as much.

We are no more prepared to block the swing of the pendulum today than we were in the 1990’s when the “super predator” fake news narratives took hold and propelled the mass incarceration of hundreds of thousands of people of color.

Upon reflection from our time working at Rikers, an inconvenient truth crystalized.

Tracy Wells-Huggins

We have been treating justice reform like our nation has treated climate change.

The glaciers are melting, the seas are rising, temperatures are extreme.

But we continue to be distracted by the iceberg up ahead, instead of engaging in an honest examination about what lies below the surface—namely the corruption, violence and systemic racism in NYC and beyond that are the root causes of the dilemma we are in today..

The work done by our team during Schiraldi’s seven months is documented in a recently released report Truth Telling and Palabra: A Project at Rikers Island by the MILPA Collective.

The executive summary can be found here.

About the Authors:

 The report is published by the MILPA Collective, a non-profit organization working nationally that is founded and led by Indigenous formerly incarcerated people. MILPA is a movement space dedicated to Cultivating Change Makers for The Next Seven Generations.

 Juan Gomez is the Co-Founder and Executive Director at MILPA, and a nationally recognized expert on the relationship between cultural healing, justice system change, and community driven movement building. Juan has served as a consultant, trainer, and strategic advisor on various projects aimed at ending mass incarceration, building next generation leadership, policy advocacy, and healing-informed system change.

Tracey Wells-Huggins is a Restorative Justice Consultant and Founder of Raw Wisdom, LLC. As a founding member of Justice 4 Families, she now sits as their Board as their Co-Chair and was recently elected as the National Vice Chair of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ).

Alex Frank served as Assistant Commissioner at Rikers Island under the leadership of Commissioner Schiraldi. Her career has included working at the Vera Institute of Justice and the Annie E. Casey Foundation where she has led efforts to transform justice systems across the country at the intersection of restorative practices, cultural healing, and antiracist policy change.

 Nel Andrews is a consultant, where she collaborates with others working to dismantle the system of white supremacy. Previously she has held leadership positions in two Baltimore-based non-profits, and spent nearly a decade leading long-term public systems change efforts for the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Center for System Innovation.