Life (?) on Rikers Island

For all of you who haven’t seen the expose by the Times of what really goes on at Rikers Island, please read Monday, July 14th paper and weep. And here is my response. “Hooray for the publication of the in-depth investigation of Rikers Island in The Times of July 14th, by Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz. The vast majority of the public has long ignored those behind bars considering any treatment as legitimate punishment. Pope John Paul II is attributed as saying “A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members”. I was a Board of Correction standards specialist staffer at Rikers Island for years until becoming a New York State Parole Commissioner. It is correction’s mandate to be responsible for the ‘care and custody’ of inmates housed on the island. Rikers is a temporary facility for most; housing people who have been convicted of a crime and are awaiting transfer to state prisons, people who are held without bail or people who can’t make bail awaiting trial, people who have been convicted of crimes that carry only jail time of up to one year and people who have never even jay-walked in their lives and will be found not guilty of any crime. It may even house our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors our relatives! We all hear the sensationalized versions of crimes and criminals but as in life there is a more ordinary picture of those jailed; the addict, the bungler, the guy who has nothing to lose, the homeless and in most cases the mentally ill (with women cornering the numbers on this). The distance between the jailed and the jailer is miniscule in most cases coming from the same neighborhoods. I applaud Commissioner Ponte’s effort to reform a system that has for too long protected itself. in uniforms.”