Mayor Bill de Blasio visited Rikers Island on Monday, making his first trip to the detention facility in more than four years amid growing scrutiny into his handling of the crisis at the jail complex.
A total of 12 people incarcerated in New York City jails have lost their lives since the start of this year, including both detainees who died in jail or were transferred to a hospital.
The tour, which the mayor had been delaying for weeks, followed a procession of visits to Rikers by other elected officials, who returned with harrowing stories of detainees deprived of food and medicine and even access to bathrooms.
By contrast, the mayor defended conditions inside the jail complex, arguing that recent city measures had made a “real impact” during a news conference held on the island. He declined to share details about what he witnessed during his roughly two-hour tour and said that he did not speak to detainees or jail staff.
“Here’s the bottom line: we’ve got a lot of changes we need to make,” de Blasio said. “What I came here to see is the work that is being done to immediately address the problems.”
"Our job is to do everything we can within a broken structure," he added, while reiterating his plan to close the island entirely by 2026.
The short-term changes will include improving health care for detainees and accelerating an intake process that has been plagued with delays and overcrowding, the mayor said. Last week, Isaabdul Karim, a 41-year-old man incarcerated on a technical parole violation, died after being held in an intake cell for 10 days without access to food or medication, according to his lawyers.
The James A. Thomas Center at Rikers
After adding new personnel and space for intake, de Blasio said, the average stay was now under 10 hours. But advocates for both the jail’s detainees and employees have questioned those figures.
Benny Boscio, the president of the union representing correction officers, told reporters immediately after the news conference that the mayor had received a sanitized tour of Rikers.
“You could smell the fresh paint — the intake was absolutely cleaned out, so he saw nothing,” Boscio said. “It was all sugar coated.”
The mayor has laid blame for much of the crisis at the feet of the union, accusing them of instigating a work slowdown that has kept as much as 20% of Rikers staff out in recent weeks, contributing to widespread disorder.
Correction Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi said on Monday that the percentage of workers on sick leave or AWOL had decreased in recent days. He added that the city would “gradually reduce” triple shifts among correction workers, a major point of contention for the union.
READ MORE: Crisis At Rikers: How NYC Judges Fueled An Increase In The City’s Jail Population
Schiraldi also acknowledged that there was not enough staff to allow detainees to access recreational facilities, but said that all living units now had some in-house programming available.
“Things have demonstrably improved,” Schiraldi added. “I still think we have a lot of work to do and we’re going to do that work.”
De Blasio has said that he wants to reduce the jail’s population — which currently stands at 5,686 — to below 5,000 people. After resisting the move for weeks, he indicated on Monday that he would be open to using his authority to grant the release of some non-violent detainees, a number he said was "dozens, not hundreds."
The reversal came as public defenders and decarceration activists held protests at all five courthouses across the city and House Democrats called on de Blasio to brief Congress about conditions at Rikers Island. On Friday, a different group of officials circulated a letter describing conditions at the jails complex as a “humanitarian crisis.”
Both de Blasio and Schiraldi have said that the city has the situation under control and does not need federal intervention.
