Rikers Island: The Failure of a “Model” Penitentiary

Published date01 December 2020
AuthorJarrod Shanahan,Jayne Mooney
DOI10.1177/0032885520968238
Date01 December 2020
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885520968238
The Prison Journal
2020, Vol. 100(6) 687 –708
© 2020 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0032885520968238
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Article
Rikers Island: The
Failure of a “Model”
Penitentiary
Jayne Mooney1 and Jarrod Shanahan2
Abstract
New York City’s Rikers jail complex is gripped by a crisis of legitimacy.
Following a series of investigations, it has been denounced as a major symbol
of criminal justice dysfunction, with calls for its closure and replacement
with new smaller “state of the art” jails. Yet, when it opened, Rikers was
hailed as a “model” facility, at the cutting edge of prison design and prisoner
rehabilitation. To elucidate the present situation, we provide a focus on the
under-explored history of New York City’s penal institutions.
Keywords
Rikers Island, penitentiaries, prisons, jails, New York City, penal reform
Introduction
Rikers Island is made up of a complex of nine separate jails. Currently,
between 4,000 to 5,000 people are incarcerated there.1 Rikers Island is situ-
ated in the East River of New York City, eight miles from the Empire State
Building and just across the waterway from LaGuardia airport. Those con-
fined on Rikers, therefore, find themselves immobilized in close proximity to
a hub of global transport, in sight of the spectacular New York City skyline,
1John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City, USA
2Governors State University, Chicago, IL, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jayne Mooney, Department of Sociology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 514 West 59th
Street, New York, NY 10019, USA.
Email: jmooney@jjay.cuny.edu
968238TPJXXX10.1177/0032885520968238The Prison JournalMooney and Shanahan
research-article2020
688 The Prison Journal 100(6)
which must surely exacerbate the impact of being incarcerated. Rikers is
infamous for housing one of the most racially and class-concentrated jail
populations in the United States: 96% of those detained are from African
American and Latino families, with only 44% holding a high school certifi-
cate, or its equivalent (Department of Correction [DOC], 2019). Most of
those on Rikers are pre-trial detainees. In other words, they are legally inno-
cent but largely too poor to post bail.
While Rikers has long been mired in scandal and controversy, in recent
years a number of highly publicized tragedies and investigations by a range
of state and non-state actors have culminated in a crisis of legitimacy. In the
present moment of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rikers is described as a “death
trap.” In April 2020 the infection rate in the jail complex was estimated to be
six times higher than that of New York City, making it the epicenter of the
US’s epicenter (Cheney-Rice, 2020). Individuals incarcerated at Rikers have
reproached the NYC Department of Correction for poor access to primary
health care and for failing to meet its own standards of pandemic safety. The
unrelenting barrage of criticism, together with activist campaigns to shut
down the facility, as well as the 2017 report of the Independent Commission
on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform, make it
increasingly likely that Rikers will be closed.
In the present climate of debate and speculation over the future of Rikers
Island and New York City’s proposals for criminal justice reform, we have
found it instructive to focus on the origins of the jail complex. We note that
when it opened, Rikers was to be a “model” facility, at the cutting edge of
prison design and prisoner rehabilitation. Its function was to replace the noto-
rious facility on Blackwell’s Island, denounced as the “worse prison in the
world.” Blackwell’s, in turn, had replaced the similarly discredited Bellevue
Penitentiary in Manhattan. Thus, to elucidate the present situation, we pro-
vide a focus on the under-explored history of New York City’s penal institu-
tions. In taking a chronological approach, we trace the arguments for reform
that paved the way to Rikers. We stress the necessity of learning from what
has happened in the past, that this might be the time for New York City to
have an entirely new conversation over the nature of penal reform. For if
“new wine” is simply put into “old bottles” we risk making the same mistakes
all over again.
Proposals for Change
In the past several years, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, New
York Times, New Yorker, and The Marshall Project, to name some of the state
and non-state observers, have reported in detail on the widespread abuse of

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