Sprol

You might be coolin’, you might be stylin’
But you won’t be smiling on Riker’s Island.
LL Cool J & DJ Polo

Like many a New York city neighborhood, Riker’s Island is a mix of transients and long-term, firmly entrenched residents. But this neighborhood is only accessible by land via a single bridge in Queens.

It’s a self-contained community of some 16,000, boasting its own ball fields, chapels, grocery stores and barbershops, its own power plant, bakery, car wash, and greenhouse.

What makes this New York neighborhood unique is that Ryker’s Island, America’s largest penal colony, isn’t a ‘hood that most of its overwhelmingly black and latino residents choose to live in.

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Purchased from a farmer named Rycken in 1895, Riker’s has been one of New York City’s fastest expanding lots. Over the past 60 years, Riker’s has expanded from its original 90 acres to its present 400 (with the help of landfill), and in the past 20, its complex of various detention centers has grown from 6 to 10.

It’s a fitting image for the U.S. prison system overall. In 1969, there were 150,000 individuals incarcerated. By 2001, that number had mushroomed to 2.1 million. That’s 7 out of every 1,000 U.S. residents, a higher rate of incarceration than any other nation in the world, a ignoble distinction previously held by Russia.

Even without the statistics, this is a growth industry that you can see. Here is a new detention facility shown while under construction.

Although overcrowding remains a problem, spending on prisons has kept up with the breakneck pace of the burgeoning prison population. State and local governments that build prisons receive a steady stream of new “constituents” for census and federal aid purposes without the hassle of a free population that can vote.

There were 351 new facilities built in the 1990s, often with state bond money that have exceeded funds for education. Otherwise put, since 1980, spending on incarceration has risen 571% compared to 33% for K-12 education.

The flipside of that statistic is that the prison population increased 400% while the number of graduating seniors dropped 2.7%.

Yet crime rates have not significantly increased during this time period.

The U.S. population’s fear of crime, however, has increased dramatically.

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Riker’s has a colorful history — much of it red. Originally, the island was a dumping ground for the city’s unwanted refuse, only becoming a dumping ground of the human kind in 1935, when Riker’s cells closed its doors on its first inmates.

Technically, Riker’s is not a prison but a jail, since two-thirds are temporary detainees while awaiting bail. Some 40% of the island’s detainees have bails of $1,000 or less, indicating the extreme conditions of poverty these potential convicts face.

It’s a penal colony of the impoverished. Nine out of ten inmates are black or latino, in jail waiting for a trial because they are poor and were arrested by the police.

By slashing spending on healthcare, other corporate prison systems (not shown) have come under fire for allowing dangerous viral infections like Hepatitis to rage unchecked throughout their inmate populations. Then, when the prisoners are returned to society, they bring their infections to the general population, increasing the cost of health care.

The way that the brutality and fear of the prison system is returned to society upon release is not unlike this.

In the past twenty years, hundreds of inmates and guards alike were injured in riots and turf wars between the Bloods, an African-American gang, and the Latin Kings and Netas, Latino gangs that had long dominated the island. Prisoners’ blood regularly decorated jail hallways, and officers dubbed the jail for teenage boys “Vietnam.”

“For some wardens, jail management meant shipping their most violent inmates to another facility under the pretext of reducing overcrowding,” wrote Jennifer Gonnerman in an special report for the Village Voice. Riker’s image has since been cleaned up.

By 2000, the number of stabbings on Riker’s had been cut by some 93%, in part thanks to the model of corporate accountability espoused by former commissioner for the NYC Department of Correction Bernard Kerik that tightened regulations for inmates and guards alike. Inmates wear color-coded ID badges that let wardens know at a glance whether or not they have been caught with a weapon or contraband.

Meanwhile, guards in meetings with the commissioner who failed to answer basic questions about the prison’s administration and culture, whether the name of a particular gang’s leader or the stock situation in the commissionary, were reportedly shown the door.

Inmates can access some opportunities for meaningful work and recreation, as through the small yet innovative Greenhouse Project, directed by the Horticultural Society of New York. The inmates get lessons in gardening and woodworking (to build planters and flower boxes), and benefit from job counseling from the organizers.

The gardens are still surrounded by barbed wire, but it’s a welcome change from the menial jobs otherwise available to most inmates. Grads of the program, and the prison system itself, can get work earning up to $10 an hour loading plants grown on Riker’s intended for rooftop and school gardens.

Most of Riker’s inmates are not destined to live the simple, idyllic life of a gardener, however: the prison cell door is a revolving one.

Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Justice show that more than 60% of inmates are rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, and almost half are reconvicted. Whatever rehabilitation efforts being made on Riker’s and its many sister “cities” around the country, they do not seem to be working.

Bo Lozoff, founder of the Human Kindness Foundation, an interfaith organization that writes and distributes free tapes, videos, books and letters to prisoners worldwide, believes the U.S. prison system is doomed to failure in that it violates every sacred principle of life, namely compassion, reconciliation, forgiveness and responsibility.

If the golden rule holds true, a system based on fear, retaliation and punishment is unlikely to bring about a change of heart for those behind bars. “We’ve been lead to imagine a legion of heartless monsters plotting to get out and hurt us again,” Lozoff writes.

“The truth is, most prison inmates are confused, disorganized and often pathetic individuals who would love to turn their lives around if given a realistic chance.”