NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE - A shocking, groundbreaking oral
history of the infamous Rikers jail complex and an unflinching portrait
of injustice and resilience told by the people whose lives have been
forever altered by it
"This mesmerizing and gut-wrenching book shows the brutal realities
that tens of thousands of people have been forced to navigate, and
survive, in America's most notorious jail."--Piper Kerman, New York
Times bestselling author of Orange is the New Black
What happens when you pack almost a dozen jails, bulging at the seams
with society's cast-offs, onto a spit of landfill purposefully hidden
from public view? Prize-winning journalists Graham Rayman and Reuven
Blau have spent two years interviewing more than 130 people comprising a
broad cross section of lives touched by New York City's Rikers Island
prison complex--from incarcerated people and their relatives, to
officers, lawyers, and commissioners, with stories spanning the 1970s to
the present day. The portrait that emerges calls into question the very
nature of justice in America.
Offering a 360-degree view inside the country's largest detention
complex, the deeply personal accounts--featured here for the first
time--take readers on a harrowing journey into every corner of Rikers, a
failed society unto itself that reflects society's failings as a whole.
Dr. Homer Venters was shocked by the screams on his first day working at
Rikers: "They're in solitary, just yelling . . . the yelling literally
never stops." After a few months, though, Dr. Venters notes, one's ears
adjust to the sounds. Nestor Eversley recalls how detainees made weapons
from bones. Barry Campbell recalls hiding a razor blade in his
mouth--"just in case".
These are visceral stories of despair, brutality, resilience, humor, and
hope, told by the people who were marooned on the island over the course
of decades. As calls to shutter jails and reduce the number of
incarcerated people grow louder across the country, with the movement to
close the island complex itself at the forefront, Rikers is a
resounding lesson about the human consequences of the incarceration
industry.
