In October 2022, photos emerged giving a glimpse into the dangerous conditions inside Rikers Island jails.^[1] Most of the inmates at Rikers Island are pre-trial defendants, meaning that they have not been convicted of a crime yet.^[2] Rikers Island disproportionately impacts Black and Brown people, keeping them unsafe in unhealthy and dangerous conditions. The photos highlight various inhumane conditions including 1) a man defecating in his shorts due to a lack of bathroom facilities and then being left in his soiled clothes until another incarcerated person brought him new clothes^[3]; 2) an incarcerated person locked in a cage shower for almost 24 hours^[4]; and 3) incarcerated people dragging sick people to receive medical care.^[5] In addition to that, the population of those incarcerated is about 56% Black, 33% Hispanic, and 7.5% White.^[6]

 

Most people see the conditions within jails and prisons and believe that prison reform will be attainable if there is more funding put into the system. This is not the case. In Rikers Island alone it costs $438,000 to incarcerate a single person there for an entire year.^[7] If Rikers cannot maintain a jail with safe and healthy living conditions with a budget of over $400k per individual, then no amount of money will be able to reform the unsanitary and unsafe conditions within the jail that disproportionately impacts thousands of Black and Brown people. Rikers is not the only correctional institution in the United States that faces these horrendous conditions. Similar stories of unsafe conditions and environments are seen in the Louisiana State Penitentiary^[8] and Cook County Jail.^[9] If we as a society really care about keeping people safe it is clear that prisons and jails are not the way to do so. They foster harm, create unsustainable living conditions, and continue the systemic exploitation of Black and Brown people.

 

Abolitionists like Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Mariama Kaba invite us to imagine a world without prisons. Mariama Kaba asks what would the United States look like if we took the millions of dollars spent on prisons and used that money towards education, housing, and food. Our communities would be much safer knowing that everyone has their needs met instead of incarcerating people who are not given the necessities for survival. Ruth Wilson Gilmore writes that “from New York City to Los Angeles, and across rural America, jail expansion has been chugging along largely because law enforcement continues to absorb social welfare work—mental and physical health, education, and family unification. To imagine a world without prisons and jails is to imagine a world in which social welfare is a right, not a luxury.”^[10]

 

Prison abolition solves the issues that prison reform wants to change. Abolition is rooted in community care to keep each other safe, not systemic and institutional racial violence. Is it unrealistic to abolish a system rooted in chattel slavery and to reimagine a society where social welfare takes over as a priority compared to incarceration? The answer is clear: it is not.

 

^[1] Julia Lurie, New Photos Reveal Squalid, Dangerous Conditions at Rikers Island, Mothering Jones   (October 8, 2022), https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2022/10/rikers-island-dangerous-conditions-photos-squalid/

^[2] Jonah E. Bromwich and Jan Ransom, Chaos at Rikers Could Lead to Federal Court Control, U.S. Attorney Says, New York Times (April 18, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/nyregion/rikers-island-federal-control.html

^[3] Julia Lurie, New Photos Reveal Squalid, Dangerous Conditions at Rikers Island, Mothering Jones   (October 8, 2022), https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2022/10/rikers-island-dangerous-conditions-photos-squalid/

^[4] Id.

^[5] Id.

^[6] Rikers An American Jail, PBS https://www.pbs.org/wnet/rikers/incarceration-faq/ (last visited October 31, 2022)

^[7] The jail on Rikers Island is both appalling and generously funded, The Economist https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/10/02/the-jail-on-rikers-island-is-both-appalling-and-generously-funded (last visited October 31, 2022).

^[8] Tana Ganeva, Report from inside Angola Prison Paints a Troubling Picture as Coronavirus Grips Louisiana, The Appeal (April 10, 2020), https://news.yahoo.com/cook-county-jail-in-chicago-under-fire-for-inmate-deaths-since-covid-pandemic-100016476.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANHQYTpSaxNxg4UclA3LEH3M3QeBkiUDjO97-u4y-xWILApwsSER2el3yjec7TMvgD9zb9KYDs69nSwKTu0yM5_Ps4eAro8f7jZjJIp1EBYwLsqohumDuoZe5FHlrLfD3ZBrt08eLL-POJyAY35squflJkT176dPM_Eml0bh01yO

^[9] Marquise Francis, Cook County Jail in Chicago under fire for inmate deaths since COVID pandemic, Yahoo!news (July 29, 2022), https://news.yahoo.com/cook-county-jail-in-chicago-under-fire-for-inmate-deaths-since-covid-pandemic-100016476.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANHQYTpSaxNxg4UclA3LEH3M3QeBkiUDjO97-u4y-xWILApwsSER2el3yjec7TMvgD9zb9KYDs69nSwKTu0yM5_Ps4eAro8f7jZjJIp1EBYwLsqohumDuoZe5FHlrLfD3ZBrt08eLL-POJyAY35squflJkT176dPM_Eml0bh01yO

^[10] Ruth Wilson Gilmore and James Kilgore, The Case for Abolition, The Marshall Project, (June 19, 2019), https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/06/19/the-case-for-abolition