It’s a short trip across a bridge to get to a 413-acre parcel of landfill — Rikers Island, New York City’s most notorious lockup — situated like a 19th-century penal colony in the middle of the East River. Ranked as one of the 10 worst correctional facilities in the US, inmates there await being shipped to a federal prison for long stretches, or are short-timers doing what’s called “City Time.”
Even amid talks of its reform, Rikers Island remains a bastion of violance and illegality. Leonardo Munoz
One former Rikers resident, the disgraced septuagenarian film producer and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, who had been awaiting trial on sex crimes charges, claimed the Big Apple’s pen was rotten to the core. He sued the city in November for $5 million, charging “deplorable conditions” there where he feared for his life.
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