Rikers Island is New York City’s main jail complex, a 413-acre site in the East River between Queens and the Bronx that holds people awaiting trial and those serving short sentences. It has become notorious for chronic violence, deaths in custody, a collapse in staffing, and conditions so persistently dangerous that a federal judge has effectively taken control of it away from the city. New York has committed by law to closing Rikers by August 2027, though construction of the replacement jails will almost certainly push that date back.
Who Is Held There
Rikers is a jail, not a prison, and the distinction shapes everything about it. It holds two groups: people awaiting trial who have not been convicted of anything, and people serving sentences of one year or less. Most detainees fall into the first category. They are legally presumed innocent but remain locked up because they cannot make bail or a judge ordered them held.1Department of Correction. Facilities Overview
The wait is long. As of mid-2023, the average length of stay for a person discharged from city jails was 104 days.2NYC Comptroller. The State of New York City Jails Some people stay far longer. Kalief Browder, the teenager whose case became a national symbol of Rikers’ failures, spent more than a thousand days on the island after being accused at sixteen of stealing a backpack, including roughly two years in solitary confinement. The charges were dropped without a trial. He died by suicide in 2015, two years after his release.
As of March 2025, the jail population stood at roughly 7,000 people, housed across multiple facilities including the Anna M. Kross Center, the Robert N. Davoren Center, and the Rose M. Singer Center for women.1Department of Correction. Facilities Overview
Violence and the Staffing Collapse
Violence runs in every direction at Rikers: detainees against each other, detainees against staff, and correction officers using excessive force against people in their custody. What makes the complex unusual is not that jail violence exists but the scale of it and the systemic failures that feed it.
The most corrosive factor is extreme absenteeism among correction officers. Unauthorized absences jumped 215 percent between 2019 and 2021, rising from an average of 645 absent-without-leave incidents per month to over 2,300. Some individual officers stopped showing up entirely for months while continuing to collect paychecks. One guard called out sick 325 days over a 30-month stretch. When officers don’t show up, housing areas go unsupervised, fights escalate without intervention, and sick or suicidal detainees go unmonitored for hours.
The officers’ union has pointed to a spike in assaults on staff as a driver of the absences, noting that attacks on guards rose more than 130 percent over a five-year period. Whatever the cause, the result is a facility where control routinely breaks down.
Deaths in Custody
People die on Rikers at an alarming rate. In just the first months of 2025, the city’s Board of Correction counted 12 deaths in custody.3NYC.gov. First Report and Recommendations on 2025 Deaths in NYC DOC Custody The pattern involves medical neglect, inadequate suicide prevention, and delayed emergency response.
One case captures how these deaths happen. In November 2019, detainee Nicholas Feliciano attempted to take his own life in his cell. Correction officers and a captain waited nearly eight minutes before intervening. Feliciano survived but suffered brain damage. His grandmother filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, and the city ultimately settled for $28.75 million.3NYC.gov. First Report and Recommendations on 2025 Deaths in NYC DOC Custody Wrongful death and negligence settlements are a recurring cost of operating the complex.
A Federal Judge Now Runs the Jails
In 2011, the class-action lawsuit Nunez v. City of New York was filed in the Southern District of New York over the systematic use of excessive force by correction staff.3NYC.gov. First Report and Recommendations on 2025 Deaths in NYC DOC Custody The U.S. Department of Justice joined the case, and in 2015 the parties reached a consent decree requiring reforms to use of force, incident reporting, and supervisor accountability.
The city did not comply. In November 2024, Chief U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain held the city in civil contempt for violating eighteen provisions of the consent decree. In May 2025, Judge Swain appointed a Nunez Remediation Manager with authority to hire, fire, demote, and transfer correction staff, rewrite department policies, direct spending on contracts and equipment, and take disciplinary action against any employee, all without needing the city’s permission.4U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. Opinion and Order Regarding Appointment of a Nunez Remediation Manager On matters covered by the contempt findings, a court-appointed outsider runs the jails, not the city.
Limits on Solitary Confinement
Solitary confinement at Rikers has been one of its most criticized practices, particularly after the Browder case exposed how it was used against teenagers for months or years at a time. Both the state and the city have moved to restrict it.
New York’s HALT Act took effect in March 2022. It limits segregated confinement, defined as keeping someone locked in a cell more than 17 hours a day, to 15 consecutive days or 20 days within any 60-day period. It generally bans solitary altogether for people under 22, over 55, pregnant, or disabled. Facilities must offer at least four hours of daily out-of-cell programming to anyone still placed in segregation.5New York State Commission of Correction. HALT 2023 Annual Report
New York City went further. Local Law 42, passed over the mayor’s veto in January 2024, bans solitary confinement beyond four hours in city jails and requires at least 14 hours of daily out-of-cell time for all detainees.6Intro.nyc. Local Law 42 of 2024 The law took effect around late July 2024. Implementation has been contested, and correction officers have pushed back on the operational demands, but the legal prohibition is now in place.
Mental Health Care
Rikers holds a large population of people with serious mental illness, making it one of the biggest de facto psychiatric facilities in the country. NYC Health + Hospitals’ Correctional Health Services provides care inside the jails, but violent conditions, staffing shortages, and the nature of incarceration itself make effective treatment difficult.
For detainees with the most acute psychiatric needs, there are specialized housing units. Mental observation units, 15 of them as of 2022 and many in the Anna M. Kross Center, provide closer clinical evaluation, suicide watch, medication management, and group therapy. A step above are the 12 PACE units (Program to Accelerate Clinical Effectiveness), which function more like inpatient psychiatric care, with dedicated medical, nursing, and mental health staff for people who cannot function in general population housing due to chronic mental illness or risk of psychiatric crisis. Even in these units, access to medication is more reliable than in general population, where a detainee often needs a correction officer escort to pick up prescribed drugs.
The Cost of Running Rikers
The full annual cost of incarcerating one person in New York City jails reached $556,539 in fiscal year 2021, an all-time high.7NYC Comptroller. Comptroller Stringer – Cost of Incarceration per Person in New York City Skyrockets to All-Time High That figure includes staff salaries, healthcare, debt service on buildings, and central administrative costs. The expense is driven largely by personnel costs, including the overtime needed to cover for absent officers. When a large share of the workforce doesn’t show up on a given day, the officers who do show up work double shifts at overtime rates.
The Plan to Close Rikers
On October 19, 2019, the New York City Council voted 36 to 13 to close Rikers Island and replace it with four smaller borough-based jails in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.8Freedom Agenda. Movement to Close Rikers Island The legal closure deadline is August 31, 2027. The plan also calls for reducing the city’s total jail capacity by roughly 75 percent, on the assumption that decarceration and bail reform will keep the population low enough to fit in the new facilities.
The project has grown in cost. The Council originally approved an $8.7 billion price tag; the current estimate is $15.6 billion.9NYC.gov. Borough-Based Jails Report – January 2026
The 2027 deadline will almost certainly be missed. The Manhattan jail is roughly two years behind schedule, with completion projected for 2029. Design work on the Queens and Bronx facilities only recently began, and their construction is expected to be finished in 2031, four years after the legal deadline.9NYC.gov. Borough-Based Jails Report – January 2026
What Happens to the Island Itself
In 2021, the City Council passed Local Law 16, which requires that by August 31, 2027, all portions of Rikers Island be transferred from the Department of Correction to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and no longer be used to house incarcerated people.10Columbia Law School. Local Law 16 of 2021 The law directs the city to plan for sustainability and resiliency uses, including renewable energy generation and storage, wastewater treatment, and organic waste processing.
The Renewable Rikers proposal would turn the island into green infrastructure: solar arrays and battery storage to replace polluting peaker power plants, a consolidated wastewater treatment facility, and a food scrap and yard waste recycling operation. A research and training institute is also proposed to teach green jobs to communities most affected by mass incarceration and environmental pollution. A city advisory committee is required to evaluate the proposals and submit recommendations.
Visiting and Contacting Someone at Rikers
In-person visits are available four days a week: Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM, and Saturdays and Sundays from 7:00 AM to noon. Arriving outside those registration windows means no visit that day.11NYC Department of Correction. In-Person Visits Visiting groups are limited to two adults and one small child, or one adult and two children. All visitors 16 and older must present a valid photo ID such as a driver’s license, passport, IDNYC card, or military ID.
Phone calls from Rikers are free, whether made from the housing unit’s landline phones or from the tablets that every person in custody receives at intake.12NYC Department of Correction. DOC Officially Launches New Tablet Program for All People in Custody The tablets also provide free access to educational materials, a digital law library, e-books, and radio stations. Families can deposit money into a detainee’s account through JPay or Western Union; there is no fee when depositing directly at a DOC cashier’s window, but the third-party transfer agents charge their own fees.13NYC Department of Correction. Send Money Cash inside the facility is treated as contraband, so all purchases go through the detainee’s account.