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Rikers Island Jail Complex: The Use of Social History to Inform Current Debates on Incarceration in New York City
Author(s) -
MOONEY JAYNE,
SHANAHAN JARROD
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the howard journal of crime and justice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.462
H-Index - 7
eISSN - 2059-1101
pISSN - 2059-1098
DOI - 10.1111/hojo.12380
Subject(s) - state (computer science) , criminology , political science , law , sociology , history , public administration , algorithm , computer science
Rikers Island is the main jail complex for New York City. At its height in the 1990s, 22,000 people were incarcerated there. Having attracted national and international condemnation, it is regarded as one of the city's biggest failures: a magnet for scandal and controversy. In 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged that the complex would be closed within ten years with smaller ‘state of the art’ jails built to replace it. Our research explores the social history of Rikers from its origins to the present day, in a bid to provide a more nuanced understanding of the island and incarceration in New York City, and to engage with ongoing debate on the future of penal reform.