New York City Plan to “Close” Rikers Jail Means Letting Torture and Brutality Continue There at Least 10 More Years
April 10, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On April 3, a commission convened by the New York City Council speaker issued a report on the city’s huge jail complex on Rikers Island. Like various other reports in recent years, this one found that guards at Rikers use brutal force against prisoners at an “alarming rate”—inmates are punched in the head, slammed into walls, kicked while handcuffed, doused with pepper spray, and so on—and then lie about it.
Just a few days before this report was made public, Mayor Bill de Blasio (who last year said closing down Rikers was “unrealistic”) announced his agreement with a plan to shut Rikers down. The plan is to move inmates to jails built throughout the city, and it will take at least 10 years to implement, if the city actually goes ahead with it.
About 77,000 people go through Rikers a year. On average about 10,000 are locked up every day—about 93 percent men; the majority African-Americans and Latinos from low-income neighborhoods; some 40 percent diagnosed with a mental health issue. About 85 percent of the people have NOT been convicted of a crime but are behind bars at Rikers—for weeks, months, or even years—awaiting trial, usually because they cannot get bail. A New York Times investigation reported that just in an 11-month span in 2013, 129 inmates were seriously injured by guards and required hospitalization.
The Struggle to Close Down Rikers
Authored by Bob Avakian, and adopted by the Central Committee of the RCP
Do you know anyone else—any person or organization—that has managed to bring forth an actual PLAN for a radically different society, in all its dimensions, and a CONSTITUTION to codify all this? — A different world IS possible — Check out and order online the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal).
Excerpt from the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, on Prisons and Prisoners
The New Socialist Republic in North America will be a revolutionary society aiming for the final goal of a communist world, where human beings everywhere would be free of relations of exploitation and oppression and destructive antagonistic conflicts, and could be fit caretakers of the Earth. This new socialist society will handle the question of prisons and prisoners in light of that goal. The following is from Section 2: Legal and Civil Rights and Liberties.
ix. In regard to all those convicted and sentenced to be punished for violation of the law, the basic orientation with regard to such imprisonment shall be to rehabilitate the persons convicted and imprisoned, and to release them and reintegrate them as productive members of the larger society, as soon as it may be possible to do so, in accordance with the judgment that this can be done without unacceptable risk and danger to society and the people, and where doing so would not be contrary to what is set forth in this Constitution. To this end, education, in accordance with the principles set forth in this Constitution—and in particular the principle of “solid core, with a lot of elasticity,” including education in the communist worldview and values but also access to a wide variety of political and philosophical, scientific, literary and other works, expressing a diversity of views—shall be afforded prisoners, and they shall be provided with the means to engage in productive work which can make a contribution to society, under conditions which are not only humane but which conform to the general standards of work in society at large. In no case shall persons be kept in prison for a period longer than that provided for by law and through legal proceedings embodying due process of law.
For many years, different groups have exposed the horror at Rikers and organized protests to demand it be shut down. On October 23, 2015, as part of Rise Up October, protesters shut down Rikers for about an hour—with 17 people arrested for carrying out civil disobedience that blocked the entry gate. In September 2016, 500 people—including celebrities, politicians, and former inmates—demonstrated in Queens to demand Rikers be shut down. There have been many other protests.
Protest to shut down Rikers, October 23, 2015. Photo: Special to revcom.us
Videos: James from the Internet
Horror stories of brutality and murder by guards have been coming out of Rikers for decades. Many now know the story of Kalief Browder, a 17-year-old, jailed at Rikers to await trial after being accused of stealing a backpack. Browder was put in solitary confinement for long periods and repeatedly brutalized by guards; and when he attempted suicide he was put in solitary again. Finally released from Rikers after three years, Browder committed suicide in June 2015, a year after being released.
TIME: The Kalief Browder Story, a six-part docu-series on Spike produced by Jay Z, was seen by three million people in its first week. Rikers, a documentary by Bill Moyers featuring interviews with inmates, is scheduled to premiere on PBS in May.
Rikers has become infamous across the U.S. and internationally. The New York Times recently described Rikers as “synonymous with brutality, incompetence, corruption and neglect,” adding that, “If there is one place that exemplifies the national disgrace of mass incarceration, of inmates languishing without trial, of the warehousing of those with mental illnesses, it’s Rikers.” The British Guardian noted in a photo caption that “Rikers has its own place in the history of racism in America”; and it noted, “Rikers has been nicknamed Gladiator School, Torture Island, the Guantánamo of New York and, in summertime, the Oven...” and is “one of the largest, most stubborn sores on America’s blighted criminal justice landscape.”
All this has put a spotlight on the horrors going on at Rikers—exposing the USA with this glaring example of mass incarceration and the racist IN-justice system in America. This is one big reason behind the plan of the powers that be to shut Rikers down. But their plan really amounts to dividing Rikers up into smaller centers of mass incarceration.
If New York City did actually follow through with this plan, what will it mean? Ten more years of Rikers means thousands more brutalized and tortured at this hellhole. This is BULLSHIT. Rikers needs to be shut down NOW. The torture must stop, RIGHT NOW.
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