RIKERS

A multivocal tour of hell on Earth: the infamous prison complex that is “out of sight, hard for visitors to reach, closed, and foreboding.”

“We’re talking about a place that smelled like death, vomit, urine, feces, and like the bad train stations in New York City all wrapped up in one.” Welcome to Riker’s Island, the New York City jail, as narrated, in this case, by Yusef Salaam, detained there (wrongly, as it happens) for five years for his presumed part in the Central Park 5 case. Rikers isn’t so much a jail or prison as a series of them, with facilities for mobsters, murderers, shoplifters, youth offenders, and the mentally ill—but sometimes with such populations intermixed. No one, it seems, is quite clear on what Rikers is supposed to do: Is it to rehabilitate or to punish? Notes one defense attorney, “The lessons that are taught by virtue of the way Rikers has worked are not lessons that are constructive in the real world.” One lesson, award-winning journalist Rayman and Blau reveal in this collection of horrifying testimonials, is that it’s easy to be killed at Rikers, whether by the guards or other inmates. Another lesson is that the system protects itself: If you’re beaten to death there, it’s just collateral damage. The system treats prisoners like animals, and the prisoners oblige, in time, by losing their humanity. But not all. One Lucchese family foot soldier recounts striking a humane deal with a hungry mouse, one of an innumerable infestation: “I leave some food all the way in the corner, opposite corner of the cell, and you leave my food alone.” Such moments of understanding are altogether rare in this brutal oral history, with voices ranging from one-time corrections leader Bernard Kerik to a 15-year-old HIV–positive inmate. Nearly all agree on one point: Rikers needs to be demolished, which is now a very real possibility—save that no one knows what will succeed it.

If there were ever an argument for prison reform, it’s in these pages.