William Clemons, the highest-ranking uniformed officer of New York City's Correction Department, will resign, it was announced today, because—well, because Rikers Island is a really, truly, unimaginably awful place.
In addition to a place where prison guards beat inmates to death with impunity, Rikers Island is also a place where inmates die from medical mistreatment and their families are lied to about it, DNAinfo reports.
The guards at Rikers Island are notoriously violent toward inmates—especially mentally ill ones—and it's relatively rare that even documented beatings result in punishment for those responsible. That's why it's a surprising, encouraging development that a judge recommended the termination of six employees this week.
Florence L. Finkle, who directed investigations at Rikers Island, resigned today after a federal report detailed beatings of young inmates and a "culture of violence" at the jail, the New York Times reports. According to the Times, her departure is the first of many changes expected at the city's correction department.
In the last five years, three Rikers Island inmates have died after apparent beatings from guards at the prison facility. To date, none of the guards involved in those beatings has been charged with a crime, the Associated Press reports.
The rest of the world might be falling apart, but Rikers Island is still reliably horrific. A New York mother is suing Corizon, the company that provides healthcare at Rikers, New York City's largest jail complex, saying her 19-year-old son died in a cell there last year after being denied adequate medical treatment.
A new report from the New York Times elaborates on what became painfully evident after two recent deaths on Rikers Island: New York's most notorious prison is a violent, terrifying place, especially for people with mental illnesses.
Last September, a mentally ill Rikers Island inmate died after he'd been locked alone in his prison cell for seven days. By the time prison staff took him to a hospital, Bradley Ballard, who was schizophrenic, was naked and covered in his own feces, with a rubber band tied around his infected genitals.
After a vicious random attack at the Rikers Island visitors' center left him with a long, gory gash on his face, 20-year-old Chard Seegars thought his suffering had reached its apex.
The Village Voice has released gruesome images of violence coming from notorious Rikers Island. The graphic images—be warned—will turn your stomach, and further corroborate the Voice's ongoing documentation of out-of-control violence inside Rikers.
Accused "Riverside Rapist" and alleged con man Hugues Akassy is on trial for sexual assaulting, stalking, and harassing five women in upper Manhattan. The trial raises many questions: Did he do it? How did he evade arrest for so long? And where did he get that smashing ascot?
Remember the Great Columbia University Frat Boy Drug Bust of 2010? Frat boy cocaine kingpin Harrison David is heading to Rikers Island: He turned himself in today to serve six months in jail, followed by five years of probation. With good behavior and time served (his plastic surgeon father refused to bail him out for…
The New York City's Department of Corrections' failure to develop an Irene-related evacuation plan for all the prisoners trapped inside Rikers Island has pissed off people who still remember what happened to prisoners during Katrina, and also those people who oppose drowning. There are still many such people in…
Following a mental health evaluation, accused rapist and International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss Kahn has been put on suicide watch at Rikers Island Prison. But don't worry, M. Strauss-Kahn! Hack economist/game show host Ben Stein is on your case!
"Sex-starved and promiscuous" female guards are constantly having sex with inmates at Rikers Island, the New York Post reports, based on an interview with former guard Yolanda Dickinson. Who just happens to have written a novel—titled Taboo—"based on the jail's out-of-control sex scene"! How "out of control" is the…
Rikers Island inmate Shaheed Bilal has been charged with forging fake credit cards to buy $1 million worth of iPads and Mac laptops and then selling them nationwide at a discount. Talk about an inside Jobs. Get it? Jobs!
Food crusader Mayor Michael Bloomberg has found a way to save the city around $350,000 a year — by cutting the calorie intake of Rikers Island inmates by 160 a day. And no more chocolate pudding! Or black pepper.
Rapper Lil' Wayne, who is expected to serve eight months of a one-year sentence for illegal gun possession, is now stuck in solitary confinement after guards found headphones and an iPod charger hidden in his jail cell on Rikers Island.
Prison sucks. Except for one thing, apparently: On Rikers Island there's this legendary cake. It's a delicious carrot cake. Here is the recipe, which the Times has printed, because if there's anything good about prison we want it too.
Remember Ronald Tackman, the career criminal who was awaiting sentencing on fraud charges the other day, but who managed to slip out of court because he was dressed in a three-piece suit and officers assumed he was a lawyer? Tackman is back behind bars today; the police arrested him in Washington Heights last night.…
